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THE    OPENING    DOOR 


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JUSTUS  MILES  FORMAN 

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[See  page  241 
SHE     FOUND      HERSELF      CRYING     ON     THE     FRONT     OF     HIS     COAT 


THE 
OPENING    DOOR 

A  STORY  OF 
THE  WOMAN'S    MOVEMENT 


BY 

JUSTUS  MILES  FORMAN 

AUTHOR  OF 

"THE  UNKNOWN  LADY" 
"  BUCHANAN'S  WIFE  " 

ETC. 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW    YORK    AND     LONDON 

MCMXIII 


COPYRIGHT.    1913.    BY    HARPER  A    BROTHERS 


PRINTED   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES  OF  AMERICA 


PUBLISHED   APRIL.    1913 


A-N 


-5511 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 


2228447 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 


CHAPTER  I 

THERE  were  no  examinations  at  the  Misses 
Wanley's  Select  School  for  Girls  in  New  Haven. 
Such  tests  of  knowledge  might  be  all  very  well  for 
those  larger  institutions  where  strange  and  wild 
young  women  from  heaven  knows  what  recesses  of 
this  continent  are  received,  hustled  through  a  kind 
of  machine,  and  packed  off  home  again;  but  the 
Misses  Wanley's  Select  School  was  a  day  school 
instituted  and  maintained  for  the  education  of  the 
daughters  of  New  Haven's  Good  Families — and  that 
is  a  very  different  thing  indeed.  At  the  end  of  a 
term  you  listened  (if  you  chose)  to  a  brief  resume  of 
the  term's  work  by  the  lady  instructors,  shook 
hands  with  the  surviving  Miss  Wanley,  and  went 
home  to  await,  with  what  patience  God  may  have 
endowed  you,  the  passage  of  a  generous  vacation. 
At  the  conclusion  of  your  four  years'  course,  the 
surviving  Miss  Wanley  delivered  before  you  an 
allocution  upon  the  Duties  and  Privileges  of  Woman 
hood,  you  shed  a  gentle  tear,  strapped  up  your 

[11 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

books,  and,  perhaps  with  an  obscure  sense  of  some 
thing  ended  forever,  stepped  out  into  the  world. 

Miss  Hope  Standish  at  the  age  of  eighteen  had 
moments  of  imagining  herself  unsentimental.  It 
was  a  foolish  delusion,  and  not  founded  upon  ascer- 
tainable  fact,  but  it  did  no  one  harm  and  gave  Miss 
Standish  a  stern  kind  of  pleasure,  so  we  may  afford 
to  be  lenient  with  it.  She  sat  in  her  place,  one  of 
twelve  "finished"  young  ladies,  on  a  beautiful  May 
afternoon  of  the  year  nineteen  hundred  and  nine,  and 
listened  by  fits  and  starts  to  the  discourse  which  the 
surviving  Miss  Wanley,  a  tall,  lean,  and  gentle  lady 
in  black  silk,  was  pronouncing  with  just  as  much 
conviction  and  polite  fervor  and  repressed  emotion 
as  if  she  had  not  repeated  it  in  exactly  the  same  words 
annually  for  seventeen  years. 

Young  Miss  Standish  fixed  this  tall  and  excessively 
respectable  figure  with  a  sudden  deliberate  keenness 
of  vision  as  if  she  had  never  seen  it  before.  She 
removed,  as  it  were,  smoked  glasses  from  before  her 
eyes,  ear  muffs  from  her  ears,  and  sat  there,  behind 
her  little  mahogany  desk,  by  her  own  act  of  will  a 
total  stranger  in  a  strange  place.  She  saw  an 
elderly  lady,  incredibly  genteel  of  aspect,  regarding 
with  faded  blue  benignant  eyes  a  number  of  modern 
young  women,  and  babbling  in  a  faded  sweet  be 
nignant  voice  inconceivable  banalities,  timidities, 
platitudes — the  desiccated  remains  of  long -buried 
sentiments — the  honeyed  myths  of  1830. 

...   Be   true  to  your   womanhood!    Never 
1*1 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

forget  that  in  creating  you  women  an  all-wise 
Providence  has  given  you  a  great  Privilege  and  has 
placed  you  under  a  Solemn  Obligation.  Remember 
that  the  Crown  of  Womanhood  is  Sacrifice.  The 
woman  who  suffers  long  and  is  kind,  who  envieth 
not,  who  vaunteth  not  herself  and  is  not  puffed  up, 
who  does  not  behave  herself  unseemly,  who  seeketh 
not  her  own,  who  thinketh  no  evil,  beareth  all  things 
and  is  not  easily  provoked — it  is  she  who  finally 
attains  to  Consideration. 

"Not  for  you,  my  dear  young  ladies,  the  heat 
and  dust  of  the  arena,  not  for  you  the  struggle  of 
existence;  for  you  rather  the  sweetness  and  light 
of  the  home.  As  you  are  sheltered  and  protected 
from  life's  harsher  aspects,  see  that  you  earn  the  right 
to  that  shelter  and  protection.  Since  Heaven  has 
allotted  to  you  the  blest  province  of  comforter  and 
consoler  to  those  upon  whose  shoulders  the  burden  of 
life  rests,  see  that  you  accept  the  privilege  in  joy 
with  meekness  and  thanksgiving." 

Young  Miss  Standish  was  seized  by  a  sudden, 
almost  overmastering  desire  to  laugh  aloud.  She 
looked  furtively  about  her  in  the  expectation  of 
catching  winks  and  nods  and  satirical  grins.  To  the 
left  her  friend,  Miss  Ethel  Goffe,  was  dabbing  at  her 
eyes  with  a  handkerchief  rolled  up  into  a  little  damp 
ball;  to  the  right  her  friend,  Miss  Cornelia  Hitchcock, 
sat  in  an  attitude  of  deferential  attention,  her  hands 
in  her  lap,  her  head  somewhat  bowed,  gazing  up 
under  her  fine  eyebrows  gravely  toward  the  fount 

[3] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

of  early  Victorian  wisdom;  somewhere  behind  an 
other  maiden  dolefully  blew  her  nose. 

And  this  was  the  year  of  our  Lord  nineteen  hun 
dred  and  nine. 

Hope  shook  her  head  with  a  kind  of  baffled 
wonder.  She  couldn't  rid  herself  of  the  feeling  that 
this  decorous  scene  was  in  reality  a  grotesque  farce 
which  the  surviving  Miss  Wanley  and  her  twelve 
graduating  disciples  had  amiably  agreed  to  enact 
together  on  their  last  day. 

"As  you  are  sheltered  and  protected  from  life's 
harsher  aspects.  .  .  ." 

A  tag  of  recently  acquired  knowledge  rose  to  the 
surface  of  Hope's  mind,  and  she  permitted  herself 
to  wonder  for  an  instant  if  the  surviving  Miss  Wan- 
ley  knew  that  more  than  half  of  the  young  women  of 
sixteen  to  twenty,  the  country  over,  were  at  that 
moment  working  for  their  bread.  She  had  a  wild 
impulse  (a  kind  of  mischievous  stone-throwing, 
snow -balling  impulse)  to  jump  to  her  feet  and 
put  the  question  just  to  see  what  would  hap 
pen. 

"Outraged  expression  and  smelling-salts,  I  should 
think,"  she  said  to  herself  rather  grimly.  In  any 
case  it  was  too  late  now,  for  the  surviving  Miss 
Wanley  had  turned  to  educational  matters. 

"For  the  past  four  years  we  have  striven,  under 
Providence,  to  familiarize  your  minds  with  at  least 
the  elements  of  those  branches  of  knowledge  best 
fitted  to  women's  comprehension,  best  adapted  to 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

develop  and  foster  in  them  the  qualities  of  which 
I  have  been  speaking. 

"How  wonderful  it  is  to  behold  the  beauty  of  a 
well-stored  mind,  proud  yet  humble  in  the  conscious 
ness  of  its  well  being!" 

"Oh!"  said  Hope  Standish  to  herself,  in  a  sort 
of  inward  groan,  "oh,  fudge!  oh,  Anastasia  Mary, 
for  shame!"  She  thought  back  over  the  four  years 
just  closing,  over  the  blind  and  stupid  and  stub 
born  processes  by  which  her  brain,  and  eleven 
other  brains,  too — fair  average  brains — had  been 
stuffed  very  much  as  a  sack  is  stuffed  with  vege 
tables.  It  was  wonderful  to  behold — oh  yes !  fearful 
and  wonderful.  It  mildly  appalled  her,  though,  not 
being  an  analytical  young  person,  and  having  no 
true  realization  of  what  she  had  lost,  she  was  by  no 
means  overcome.  She  didn't  really  care,  but  to 
hear  Anastasia  Mary  go  on  about  the  beauty  of  a 
well-stored  mind — that  was  really  too  much! 

However,  at  the  end  of  what  might  be  termed  the 
second  leg  of  her  course,  but  that  the  word  has  a 
sound  of  blatant  indecency  in  this  decorous  scene,  the 
surviving  Miss  Wanley  came  about  and  found  safer 
waters.  She  took  a  step  nearer  to  the  row  of  little 
mahogany  desks,  lowered  her  voice  to  a  more 
intimate  tone,  and  began  to  speak  of  the  per 
sonal  relations  which  had  existed  between  herself 
and  her  twelve  charges,  and  of  the  sorrow  with 
which  she  saw  them  draw  to  a  close.  That  was  the 
end  of  Hope  Standish's  fine  attitude  of  aloofness 

[5] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

and  higher  criticism.  Anastasia  Mary  declaiming 
about  the  Crown  of  Womanhood  and  the  Beauty  of  a 
Well-stored  Mind  was  one  thing;  old  Miss  Wanley, 
telling  how  it  nearly  broke  her  aged  heart  to  see  her 
brood  go  from  her,  was  quite  another.  "You're  a 
wretched  little  beast!"  Miss  Standish  said  to  herself. 
"And  Anastasia's  an  old  darling."  She  began  to 
feel  quite  sobby  and  sentimental  and  teary,  and 
got  out  her  handkerchief,  and  in  the  briefest  space  of 
time  it  was  quite  as  damp  a  little  round  ball  as 
Miss  Ethel  Goffe's — damper. 

They  crowded  round  the  tall  black  silk  old  lady, 
those  twelve  tall,  healthy,  vigorous  girls  whose  minds 
she  had  so  gently  put  to  death — an  intellectual 
slaughter  of  the  innocents.  They  crowded  round 
her  with  wet  and  shining  eyes,  and  Miss  Wanley 
kissed  them  one  by  one  on  both  cheeks  and  held 
them  close  for  an  instant  as  a  mother  might  do  (but 
they  all  had  mothers  at  home),  and  faltered  a  few 
kindly  affectionate  words,  and  one  by  one  they  went 
out  of  her  school. 

Hope  was  among  the  last,  for  she  had  waited  to 
strap  up  the  half  dozen  books  that  were  in  her  desk 
and  to  destroy  a  few  incriminating  papers.  Anas 
tasia,  standing  between  Misses  Goffe  and  Hitchcock, 
greeted  her  approach  with  a  very  tender  smile,  for  the 
girl  was  her  favorite. 

"And  so  we  lose  our  Beauty,  too!  Oh,  my  dear! 
I  wish  we  might  keep  you  always."  It  was  the  first 
time  she  had  ever  made  use  of  that  pleasant  epithet, 

16] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

and  Hope,  albeit  she  knew  sufficiently  well  that 
she  was  beautiful,  was  surprised  and  touched  and 
pleased.  She  said  how  much  she  too  wished  she 
might  remain  there  always  where  she  had  had  simply 
a  perfect  time,  and  that  she  should  never  forget  how 
good  Miss  Wanley  had  been  to  her,  and  that  Miss 
Wanley  must  remember  she  was  dining  with  mother 
and  me  on  Thursday.  So  she  was  kissed  on  each 
cheek  and  told,  "Be  true  to  yourself,  my  child!" 
(whatever  that  may  have  meant),  and  presently 
found  herself  out  in  the  warm  sunshine  among  the 
lilac  trees  of  the  front  garden,  where  Mesdemoiselles 
Goffe  and  Hitchcock,  with  two  or  three  others,  were 
awaiting  her. 

She  glanced  back  at  the  solid  and  somewhat  austere 
fagade  of  the  old  mansion,  where  two  governors  of  the 
state  had  lived  in  their  day,  before  the  place  became 
a  temple  of  learning. 

"Well,  that's  over!"  she  said,  and  was  conscious 
of  being  not  a  little  moved  by  the  fact. 

"Yes,"  said  Miss  Goffe,  cheerily — as  one  who, 
having  dropped  her  appropriate  tear,  is  prepared 
to  look  on  the  bright  side — "yes,  and  I  don't  mind 
confessing  to  all  the  world  that  I'm  glad  of  it.  I 
hope  with  all  my  little  heart  that  I  shall  never  have 
to  learn  anything  again — never!" 

For  some  reason  there  returned  to  Hope  Standish 
a  brief  flash  of  her  earlier  mood. 

"Learn?"  she  asked.  "Learn?  Have  you  learnt 
anything  in  there?  What?" 

[7] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

It  was  one  of  those  awkward  questions  that  really 
shouldn't  be  propounded.  Young  Miss  Goffe  con 
sidered  it  with  what  seemed  to  be  a  mixture  of  be 
wilderment  and  displeasure. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  Heaps  of  things,  of  course: 
Languages  and  history  and — and  Ganot's  Physics 
and  English  Literature  and  Travel  and — heaps  of 
things." 

"Oh,  have  you?"  Hope  said.  "Well,  I  knew 
more  French  and  German  four  years  ago  than  I  know 
now.  I  haven't  learnt  any  history  because  they 
didn't  make  it  interesting  to  me,  and  I  think  those 
travel  lectures  with  then'  silly  pictures  were  just 
rather  bad  jokes.  Why  not  go  to  Burton  Holmes 
and  see  it  done  decently — if  it's  worth  doing  at 
all?"  She  wrinkled  her  brow  in  perplexity  before 
a  subject  too  big  for  her. 

"I  can't  help  thinking  that  there's  been  something 
quite  all  wrong  about  it  from  the  first.  They've 
just  poured  things  into  us  as  if  we  were  barrels  that 
had  to  be  filled  up  with  any  stuff  that  came  to  hand. 
I'm  sure  that's  wrong  somehow.  They  haven't 
trained  my  mind — taught  it  how  to  work.  Have 
they  yours?  They've  just  fed  it  with  a  lot  of  things 
it  didn't  particularly  want.  I  shouldn't  know  how 
to  learn — even  if  I  wanted  to,  which  I  don't  par 
ticularly;  I've  never  been  told." 

Miss  Goffe  and  Miss  Cornelia  Hitchcock  clung  to 
each  other  in  simulated  alarm. 

"You  know  she  wasn't  always  like  this,"  said  Miss 

[8] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Goffe,  shaking  her  head.  "Once,  not  so  long  ago, 
she  was  as  merry  and  light-hearted  and  free  of  care 
as  the  rest  of  us  children.  She  danced,  she  sang,  she 
laughed  right  out.  What  can  have  befallen  our 
Beauty?" 

"Nothing  has  befallen  her,  idiot!"  snapped  the 
Beauty,  but  Miss  Cornelia  Hitchcock  (disconcert 
ingly  known  as  "the  mother  of  the  Gracchi") 
pointed  a  sudden  finger. 

"I  have  it!  It's  that  man.  It's  the  stranger 
with  the  gloomy  brow. 

"Who,"  she  demanded,  severely,  to  the  deepening 
pink  of  Miss  Standish — "who  is  the  mysterious 
suitor  I've  seen  you  walking  with  twice  —  no, 
thrice! — in  Whitney  Avenue?  I  know  what  he 
looks  like.  He  looks  like  the  Third  Conspirator — 
It  was  a  dark  and  stormy  evening,  and  round  the 
campfire  were  gathered  brigands  great  and  brigands 
small. — That's  what  he  looks  like,  but  who  is  he?" 

"Well,  if  you  care  so  much  to  know,"  said  Hope, 
with  a  discouraging  lack  of  fury,  "he's  a  man  from 
New  York,  and  he  goes  in  for  Socialism  and  Settle 
ment  work,  and  Votes  for  Women,  and  all  that  sort 
of  thing.  He's  been  telling  me  about  it,  and  it's 
rather  fun.  Just  you  stay  on  in  your  watch  tower, 
Cornelia  darling,  and  you'll  see  us  walking  together 
again  one  of  these  bright  days." 

"Socialism — settlement  work — votes  for  women!" 
they  said,  in  awed  voices,  staring  at  each  other. 

"Our  angel  child  and  the  pride  of  Anastasia's 

[9] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

heart!  My  dear!  You  mustn't,  you  know.  You 
really  mustn't.  Nice  people  don't  do  that  kind  of 
thing.  You'll  have  every  one  saying  *  Isn't  Hope 
Standish  a  little  queer?"3  And  Miss  Goffe  de 
manded: 

"Just  what's  socialism?  Isn't  it  throwing  bombs 
and  burning  things?" 

The  truth  is,  Hope  didn't  know.  She  said  un 
certainly: 

"Oh,  well,  more  or  less.  I  don't  think  he  goes 
as  far  as  bombs.  I  don't  know.  We  haven't  got 
to  that.  We've  just  talked  about  how  unfair  things 
have  always  been,  and  about  how  people  ought  to 
be  freer.  It  has  waked  me  up  a  bit." 

They  shook  their  heads  at  her  gloomily,  too  far 
gone  for  retort. 

"A  highbrow!"  murmured  the  stricken  Miss 
Goffe,  in  a  faint  voice.  "Our  pet  and  pride  a  high 
brow!  Tweed  skirt,  sensible  boots,  your  hair  in  a 
knot  behind.  Tracts — uplift.  We're  all  equal  in 
the  sight  of  God.  Oh  dear!  And  the  woman  was 
to  have  been  my  bridesmaid."  Miss  Cornelia  Hitch 
cock,  however,  was  disposed  to  meet  the  thing  more 
philosophically. 

"I  was  never  one  for  violence,"  she  announced, 
"Peace  being  my  motto.  Let  us  deal  gently  with 
our  sister.  She  may  not  be  insane;  she  may  be  in 
love.  I  seem  to  remember  that  there  was,  three 
little  years  ago,  a  handsome  gentleman  who  rowed 
on  the  crew  and  collected  pewter.  This  was  then 

[10] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

a  pewter  world  for  our  Hope  and  joy — hills  and 
valleys,  seas  and  plains — all  pewter.  Am  I  right? 
I  am.  She  has  these  attacks  and  gets  over  them. 
I'm  all  for  being  patient  with  her." 

"Oh,  are  you?"  said  Miss  Standish,  violently. 
A  generous  flush  had  risen  to  her  cheeks  at  mention 
of  the  pewter-collecting  oarsman,  and  it  lingered 
while  she  seemed  to  be  searching  her  soul  for  a  suit 
able  retort.  But  the  retort  failed  her,  as  retorts  are 
so  apt  to  do,  and  she  turned  away  in  baffled  silence. 
Her  two  friends  pursued  her  to  the  gate,  kissed  her 
with  great  energy,  and  the  three  parted  there  on 
excellent  terms,  Miss  Goffe  and  Miss  Hitchcock 
hurrying  oft7  to  keep  an  appointment,  and  Hope 
turning  her  face  homeward. 

She  walked  slowly,  with  her  eyes  on  the  ground, 
swinging  her  books  beside  her  in  their  leather  strap. 
She  didn't  even  see  the  three  Yale  undergraduates, 
acquaintances  of  hers,  who  passed  by  and  bowed 
with  the  jerky  nervous  defiance  characteristic  of 
the  unfledged  male.  (So  the  three  undergraduates 
were  hurt  in  their  feelings  and  treated  Miss  Standish 
with  marked  coldness  at  a  dinner  party  two  days 
later;  but  she  didn't  see  the  coldness,  either,  and  it 
was  wasted.) 

She  was  conscious  of  a  vague  and  very  dimly 
apprehended  malaise — a  kind  of  dim  distress,  and 
wished  she  hadn't  let  her  two  friends  leave  her. 
She  felt  all  at  once  lonely.  She  began  to  realize  that, 
despite  her  hastily  assumed  cloak  of  cynicism, 

2  [11] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

there  was  a  great  deal  of  sentiment  in  her  over 
the  Misses  Wanley's  Select  School.  After  all,  it  had 
been  her  chief  concern  for  four  years:  her  life  had, 
in  a  sense,  revolved  round  it.  And  now,  quite 
suddenly,  all  that  was  over  and  done  with — gone 
forever,  and  there  seemed  to  her  to  be  nothing  with 
which  she  could  fill  its  place. 

She  turned  into  that  beautiful  broad,  leafy  little 
street  that  is  called  Hillhouse  Avenue,  and  presently, 
coming  to  its  top,  was  before  her  own  house,  a  big 
square,  dignified  old  house  sanded  to  look  like 
stone  and  painted  the  color  of  breakfast  cocoa. 
Within,  there  was  a  wide  hall  the  full  depth  of  the 
house,  to  the  right  of  it  a  pair  of  drawing-rooms, 
to  the  left  a  library  hi  front  and  a  dining-room  behind. 
At  the  rear  end  of  the  hall  the  stairs  mounted  in 
two  wings  to  a  halfway  landing  lighted  by  windows, 
then  turned  back  on  themselves  and  continued  in 
a  single  flight. 

Hope  was  admitted  by  a  smart  young  maid  in 
black  and  white  (for  New  Haven  doesn't  run  much 
to  men  servants),  asked  who  was  at  home — though 
there  couldn't  well  have  been  anybody  but  her 
mother,  her  one  surviving  relative,  and  her  god 
mother,  who  chanced  to  be,  at  this  time,  making  one 
of  her  brief  visits  from  New  York — found  two  or 
three  letters  on  the  table  by  the  door  and  went 
on  toward  her  own  habitation. 

But  at  the  end  of  the  hall  she  paused  an  instant, 
as  her  custom  was,  to  look  up  at  the  marble  lady 

112] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

who  stood  eternally  in  her  tall  niche  between  the 
two  wings  of  the  stairs.  This  marble  lady  had  been 
rather  mysteriously  brought  to  New  Haven,  from 
some  source  never  mentioned,  by  Hope's  grand 
father,  and  set  up  on  the  low  pedestal  where  she  had 
stood  ever  since.  She  was  of  more  than  lifesize 
(once  and  a  half  perhaps),  and  seemed  to  be  Greek, 
but  a  certain  learned  gentleman  who  had  dined  in 
the  house  told  his  friends  afterward  that  he  believed 
her  to  be  a  seventeenth-century  Italian  copy  of  an 
ancient  Greek  work  the  original  of  which  was  lost 
to  the  world.  He  also  said  that  she  was  doubtless 
an  Athene,  though  her  head  was  bare  and  any 
significant  attributes  she  might  have  been  holding 
were  absent,  as  both  arms  had  been  broken  away, 
one  near  the  shoulder  and  the  other  at  the  elbow; 
the  face  luckily  was  quite  unharmed. 

In  any  case,  she  was  certainly  very  beautiful 
indeed,  and  in  a  fashion  hard  to  describe,  for  it  was 
something  far  beyond  mere  physical  perfection — a 
mysterious  warmth,  a  sense  of  vigor  and  vitality, 
an  effect  of  arrested  motion.  Somehow  you  felt  that 
the  lovely  Greek  lady,  at  that  moment  when  she  was 
frozen  into  eternal  stillness,  had  been  just  in  the  act 
of  drawing  a  deep  free  breath,  of  pressing  forward 
with  joy  and  eagerness  toward  something  wonderful 
that  you  couldn't  see  and  would  never  comprehend. 

But  there  was  a  further  and  far  more  extra 
ordinary  thing  about  this  expatriated  lovely  lady, 
and  which  is  the  reason  for  her  introduction  here. 

[13] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

Hope  looked  like  her!  The  girl  really  and  unmis 
takably  resembled  the  ancient  statue  of  Athene  (if 
that  is  what  it  was)  to  a  perplexing  and  almost 
laughable  degree.  The  fact  had  first  been  noticed  by 
somebody  about  the  house  when  Hope  was  fourteen, 
and  later  on  it  became  plain  to  all.  Once  as  a  kind 
of  lark  she  powdered  her  face  and  hair,  imitated 
the  classic  Greek  attire  as  well  as  she  could  with  a 
nightgown,  and  stood  on  a  chair  beside  her  elder 
counterpart.  Her  mother,  a  lady  whose  imagina 
tion  seldom  transcended  the  domestic  and  who  had 
no  humor,  said: 

"I  must  have  looked  at  the  statue  a  great  deal 
at  a  Certain  Time." 

To  be  sure,  the  cynical  Miss  Goffe  and  Miss 
Cornelia  Hitchcock,  who  found  the  prevailing  solem 
nity  over  this  matter  a  little  hard  to  bear,  accused 
their  friend,  whenever  she  fell  into  one  of  her  silent, 
thoughtful  moods,  of  conscious  impersonation. 

"Ah,  the  Pallas  Athene  pose!  Very  good,  in 
deed.  Excellent.  The  chin  perhaps  a  little  higher. 
So!" 

But  the  resemblance  was  far  too  real  and  too 
generally  recognized  to  be  disposed  of  as  easily 
as  all  that,  and  to  Hope  herself  it  bore  an  exciting 
and  emotional  character  that  neither  time  nor 
familiarity  ever  dulled.  She  was  a  profoundly 
sentimental  girl,  though  she  had,  like  most  of  her 
sex,  occasional  unexpected  bursts  of  terrific  prac 
ticality,  and  she  wove  a  great  deal  of  sentiment  round 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

about  the  marble  Athene  in  the  front  hall.  She 
came  to  feel  a  sense  of  mysterious  kinship  with  the 
Greek  lady — absurd  enough  if  you  like,  but  not, 
I  think,  unnatural  when  you  reflect  upon  the  extra 
ordinary  voracity  of  the  youthful  appetite  for  any 
thing  marvelous.  She  came  to  believe — being  quite 
without  humor  in  the  matter — that  it  was  for  her 
somehow  some  day  to  interpret  the  unmade  move 
ment,  the  unspoken  word,  her  kinswoman  seemed  to 
be  trying  so  hard  to  make  and  to  utter — to  interpret 
them,  perhaps  even  to  carry  them  into  being. 

Most  girls  have  in  their  meditative  hours  some 
kind  of  a  dream  world  to  retreat  into.  They  seem 
always  to  have  had  it  from  the  first  dawn  of  things, 
and  upon  this  fact  without  doubt  was  founded,  in 
large  part  at  least,  the  early  Virgin  worship,  and 
the  ascription  of  mysterious  power  of  divination, 
and  the  common  employment  of  maidens  as  priest 
esses — interpreters  between  God  and  man.  They 
do  not  seem  to  have  been,  through  the  ages,  as 
eager  to  share  their  fanciful  imaginings  with  society 
as  men  have  been,  nor  as  successful  when  they 
tried;  but  perhaps  the  imaginings  are  finer  stuff, 
as  the  ancient  world  believed,  nearer  to  the  source, 
harder  to  get  into  words.  And  besides,  I  think 
the  fabric  floats  away,  the  pictures  pale,  later  on, 
with  womanhood,  when  that  uncompromising  prac 
ticality  sets  in  and  reforms  things. 

For  Hope,  this  "maiden  meditation  fancy  free" 
was  almost  entirely  devoted  to  what  she  liked  to 

[15] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

consider  her  mystic  relationship  with  the  marble 
Athene.  She  dreamed  and  questioned  and  waited 
with  great  patience  for  an  answer  from  those  beauti 
ful  lips,  so  like  her  own,  and  in  the  end  really  did, 
as  you  shall  see,  produce  an  interpretation  which  was 
satisfactory  to  herself  at  least,  whether  it  convinced 
anybody  else  or  not. 

She  mounted  the  stairs,  pausing  a  moment  on 
the  broad  landing  to  make  a  face  at  the  row  of 
stained-glass  windows  there.  She  hated  stained 
glass  except  in  churches,  and  had  often  begged  to 
have  this  hideous  feature  of  the  house  removed,  but 
quite  in  vain,  for  her  mother  derived  some  obscure 
spiritual  satisfaction  from  it,  and  she  was,  in  her 
soft  way,  a  very  stubborn  woman.  It  was  her  custom 
to  sit  for  an  hour  or  two  before  luncheon  in  the  back 
drawing-room,  with  the  sliding-doors  into  the  more 
formal  apartment  drawn.  She  would  sew  or  play 
patience  or  read  her  father's  memoirs,  in  three 
volumes,  or  tinkle  little  simple,  old-fashioned  melodies 
on  the  piano.  But  at  about  eleven  in  summer  or 
twelve  in  winter  she  always  stopped  for  a  time 
whatever  gentle  occupation  had  employed  her  and 
came  out  the  hall  doorway  of  the  room.  For  at 
that  hour  the  morning  sun  had  risen  above  the  east 
ward  roofs,  and  was  projecting  broad  bars  and 
lozenges  and  diapers  of  azure  and  gules  and  or 
from  the  windows  on  the  landing  down  along  the 
polished  floor  of  the  hall.  The  good  lady  would 
sigh  with  pleasure,  fasten  her  eyes  upon  this  riot  of 

[16] 


I 

THE    OPENING   t)OOR 

variegated  color,  and  so  remain  quite  silent  and 
motionless  for  several  minutes. 

Hope  often  thought  of  her  mother  standing  there, 
both  at  this  time  and  long  after  the  elder  lady  had 
gone  from  this  world.  There  seemed  to  her  to  be 
something  dimly  characteristic  in  the  action. 

At  the  top  of  the  stairs  she  paused  again  outside 
her  mother's  room.  She  had  meant  to  go  in  for  a 
little  while,  but  she  heard  through  the  half-open 
door  the  sound  of  voices,  her  mother's  and  Miss 
King's.  The  two  were  talking  about  what  the 
latter  lady  often  referred  to  as  The  Cause,  and  so 
Hope  passed  on  without  entering.  The  Cause  was, 
as  she  well  enough  knew,  Woman  Suffrage,  and  she 
knew  that  her  godmother  was  a  prominent  and 
valiant  laborer  in  the  movement,  having  been  in 
earlier  days,  indeed,  associated  with  those  great 
pioneers  Miss  Anthony  and  Mrs.  Cady  Stanton. 
But  there  was  an  understanding  in  the  house  that 
The  Cause  should  not  be  discussed  before  Hope. 

"You  will  oblige  me,  Alice,  by  not  putting  Ideas 
into  the  child's  head — at  any  rate  not  until  her 
schooldays  are  over." 

Privately  the  girl  thought  this  prohibition  rather 
silly,  for  she  hadn't  the  least  interest  in  Woman 
Suffrage  and  couldn't  understand  why  anybody 
should  vote  who  didn't  have  to.  It  would  be  rather 
fun,  she  thought,  to  hear  "Aunt"  Alice,  who  was 
a  great  dear,  but  inclined  to  violence,  go  on  at  the 
dinner  table,  tilting  away  at  the  soft  impenetrability 

[17] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

of  Mrs.  Standish,  who  had  never,  since  her  birth, 
been  won  over  to  anything  by  any  argument  whatso 
ever.  However,  there  the  prohibition  was,  and  Hope 
knew  her  mother  far  too  well  to  have  tried  to  do 
away  with  it  even  if  she  had  cared,  which  she 
didn't. 

So  she  crossed  the  upper  hall  to  her  own  room  at 
the  front  of  the  house,  and  shut  the  door  behind  her. 
She  threw  her  books  on  a  table,  dropped  her  hat 
upon  them,  and  did  what  I  think  nine  out  of  ten 
young  women  would  infallibly  have  done  in  her 
place.  That  is  to  say,  she  went  straight  across  the 
room  to  her  dressing-table,  sat  down  before  it, 
regarded  her  pleasing  image  in  the  glass  with,  if  not 
anxiety,  at  least  some  earnestness,  and  prodded  her 
hair  into  place  with  her  fingers. 

And  here  and  now,  while  a  touch  of  harmless 
vanity  is  to  the  fore,  I  had  better  try,  I  suppose — 
since  I  haven't  previously  made  the  attempt — 
to  give  you  some  sort  of  picture  of  what  this  girl 
looked  like  in  her  eighteenth  year.  I  undertake 
the  task  for  two  reasons:  first,  because  her  personal 
appearance  gave  me  more  pleasure  to  contemplate 
than  that  of  any  but  two  or  three  other  women 
whom  I  have  ever  seen,  and  I  should  like  to  share 
some  of  my  pleasure  with  you;  second,  because  her 
beauty  was  so  conspicuous  that,  all  through  the 
period  of  her  life  we  are  to  follow,  it  was  constantly 
getting — if  I  may  be  permitted  the  expression — 
under  her  feet;  it  was  forever  affecting  and  modify- 

[18] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

ing  her  relations  with  other  people;  in  short,  it  was 
tin  important  and  by  no  means  negligible  possession. 

I  am  extraordinarily  conscious,  through  long  and 
dire  experience,  of  the  impossibility  of  giving  a 
recognizable  picture  of  anybody  with  words.  I 
can  make  a  kind  of  catalogue  of  Hope  Standish's 
physical  traits — if  that  is  worth  anything:  and  to 
a  degree  I  suppose  it  is.  I  can  say  that  she  was  tall, 
and  expressed  in  her  bodily  contours  and  movements 
great  vigor  and  vitality  (a  sort  of  Diana  quality, 
to  be  fanciful  about  it).  Her  waist  without  arti 
ficial  modification  was  as  thick  through  from  front  to 
back  as  it  was  from  side  to  side,  and  that  wasn't 
very  thick,  either.  Her  arms  were  lovely,  and  so 
was  her  neck,  which  (a  very  rare  thing  in  the  civilized 
world)  was  like  the  necks  of  goddesses  in  classical 
Greek  sculpture — including  the  Athene  downstairs 
in  the  hall — rather  long  and  thick  and  columnar. 

But  now  I  have  reached  her  head  I  am  suddenly 
reminded  of  a  helpful  remark  once  made  to  me  by  a 
friend  of  hers  and  mine,  and  I  shall  make  use  of  it 
here.  After  mentioning  the  fact  that  her  eyes  were 
like  brown  sherry,  and  her  hair  an  exceedingly  dark 
red,  almost  the  color  of  a  bay  horse,  I  will  say  that 
she  looked  like  the  early  portraits  of  Miss  Mary 
Anderson  (whom,  alas!  I  never  saw),  and  so  have 
done  with  the  matter.  For  that  gives  you  a  much 
better  suggestion  of  the  girl  than  I  could  manage 
with  ever  so  many  thousands  of  words.  I  wish  I  had 
thought  of  it  in  the  beginning. 

[19] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

After  that  brief  earnest  examination  of  herself 
in  the  glass  Hope  got  up  again  and  moved  slowly 
about  the  room,  touching  things  here  and  there  as 
if  their  arrangement  displeased  her,  but  not  altering 
it  much.  She  went  to  one  of  the  front  windows 
and  looked  out  into  the  street,  then  to  one  of  the 
side  windows  and  looked  out  upon  the  broad,  rising 
sweep  of  the  Hillhouse  place.  She  glanced  at  her 
watch  and  found  that  it  was  only  half  past  three,  so 
she  had  an  hour  to  wait  before  keeping  an  appoint 
ment.  She  took  her  schoolbooks  out  of  their 
strap,  and  selected  one  of  them.  It  was  covered 
like  the  rest  with  a  kind  of  supplementary  jacket  of 
shiny  brown  paper,  and  it  seems  to  have  been  a 
borrowed  schoolbook,  for  it  had  Miss  Ethel  Goffe's 
name  written  on  the  brown  paper.  The  name  of  the 
work  was  Ann  Veronica,  and  so  it  is  difficult  to  make 
out  to  just  what  department  of  learning  it  belonged. 

Hope  settled  herself  in  a  comfortable  chintz- 
covered  chaise  longue  with  the  book  entitled  Ann 
Veronica,  but  had  to  get  up  again  to  retrieve  a  box 
of  sweets — not  chocolate  creams,  as  you  may  well 
have  imagined,  but  small  cubes  of  real  Greek 
loukoumi,  made  from  the  pulp  of  grapes  that  is  left 
in  the  vat  after  the  wine  has  been  expressed,  and 
sent  to  her  by  a  friend  in  Athens.  Then  she  settled 
down  once  more,  and  remained  quite  still  for  almost 
an  hour,  except  that  once  when  she  came  to  a 
row  of  stars  and  the  untimely  end  of  a  chapter  she 
said  "  Oh!"  in  a  tone  of  great  annoyance. 

[20] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Somewhat  later  as  she  was  leaving  the  house  she 
encountered  Miss  King,  a  hurrying  gray-haired  lady 
with  kindly  blue  eyes  that,  upon  occasion,  could 
and  did  produce  an  electric-like  spark.  She  was  a 
tireless  worker  in  a  field  that  had  been  none  too 
fertile,  though  it  was  green  and  promising  nowadays, 
and  she  had  found  time  for  few  intimate  human 
attachments;  but  one  of  the  chief est  of  those  few 
was,  for  her,  the  oddest  imaginable — Hope's  mother, 
and  another  was  Hope  herself. 

"So  you've  turned  your  back  on  the  Misses 
Wanley's  Select  School  for  Girls?"  she  said,  when 
she  had  kissed  her  goddaughter  and  patted  her  arm. 
And  she  made  a  little  humorous  face,  for  she  held 
Anastasia  Mary  and  all  her  ways  hi  an  amused  though 
somewhat  impatient  contempt.  Hope  nodded,  and 
Miss  King  beamed  through  her  round  spectacles. 

"One  of  those  silly  old  boiled-down  questions  pops 
into  my  mind.  Sounds  like  the  title  of  a  magazine 
article — and  maybe  it  was,  in  its  day.  'After 
school — what?' " 

"Oh,  dear!"  said  the  girl.  "What,  indeed!  I 
wish  I  knew.  I  feel  rather  deserted  and  lost.  I  sup 
pose  I  shall  just  fiddle  along,  somehow — like  most 
people." 

"You've  got  too  much — too  much  energy,  to  do 
that,"  said  the  elder  woman.  "Too  much  bounce. 
You'll  fret  if  you  don't  find  something  to  occupy 
yourself  with."  She  nodded  back  toward  the  door 
she  had  just  left. 

[21] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"I've  been  talking  about  you  with  our  reactionary 
friend  yonder,"  she  said;  and  Hope  laughed  at  this 
summing  up  of  her  parent.  "She'd  like  you  to  sit 
in  the  back  drawing-room  and  sew  a  fine  seam  just 
like  herself.  I  told  her  not  to  be  a  fool.  The 
world  moves  on — only  she  won't  see  it.  I  told  her 
I'd  like  you  to  come  to  New  York  with  me  for  a 
month." 

Hope  said,  "Ooh!"  and  clasped  her  hands,  but 
her  godmother  shook  a  weary  head. 

"/  don't  know.  Maybe  she'll  let  you  come. 
Maybe  not.  She'll  want  to  pray  over  it,  I  expect. 
We  shall  have  to  see  what  she  gets  out  of  that.  .  .  . 
Are  you  going  for  a  walk?"  Hope  said  she  was, 
and  Miss  King  said: 

"If  you'll  wait  until  I  get  on  some  sort  of  a  hat  I'll 
come  with  you."  But  that  was,  for  some  obscure 
reason,  undesirable,  it  appeared.  The  girl  explained 
rather  volubly  that  she  had  to  look  in  at  one  or 
two  places,  which  she  was  sure  would  bore  Aunt 
Alice,  and  wasn't,  in  any  strict  sense,  just  going 
walking.  So  Miss  King  beamed  at  her  again,  with 
perhaps  a  shade  of  amusement,  patted  her  on  the 
arm,  and  said: 

"Run  along  then!  I'll  write  a  letter  or  two 
and  go  out  later  on."  Then  Hope  escaped,  though 
with  somewhat  more  than  the  usual  color  hi  her 
cheeks  and  her  brows  drawn  together  in  a  frown. 


CHAPTER  II 

SHE  turned  rather  hurriedly  round  the  corner 
into  Sachem  Street,  thence  into  the  long  stretch 
of  Whitney  Avenue,  but  presently  began  to  walk 
more  slowly,  and  not  long  afterward  came  upon  a 
solitary  young  man  who,  without  much  ceremony, 
and  with  no  expression  of  surprise  at  the  encounter, 
joined  her  and  walked  on  at  her  side. 

He  was  a  young  man  of  medium  height,  with  a  thin, 
pale  face,  a  long  nose,  and  not  quite  enough  chin.  His 
forehead  was  good — broad  and  prominent  and  well 
modeled;  and  the  eyes  under  it  were  large  and  dark 
and  thoughtful,  but  when  he  was  very  much  in 
earnest  they  had  the  wild  black  intensity  that  means 
fanaticism.  His  clothes,  save  for  a  rather  queer  hat, 
were  ordinary  dark  clothes,  very  much  like  anybody's, 
but  they  went  on  him  with  an  odd  air  of  not  be 
longing  to  the  man.  They  looked,  in  an  obscure 
fashion,  somehow  rebellious,  and  the  man  looked  a 
rebel  also,  which  wasn't  in  the  least  deceitful  of  him. 

Hope,  glancing  out  of  the  corner  of  her  eyes,  as 
if  she  had  never  seen  him  before,  gave  a  little  inward 
laugh,  for  she  remembered  what  Miss  Ethel  Goffe 
had  said. 

[23] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"It  was  a  dark  and  stormy  evening,  and  round 
the  campfire  were  gathered  brigands  great  and 
brigands  small." 

Young  Mr.  Traill  did  look  rather  like  that. 

She  had  first  encountered  him  a  week  before 
this  time,  when  he  had  come  to  Hillhouse  Avenue  to 
consult  Miss  King  about  some  business  connected 
with  The  Cause.  She  heard  voices  in  the  drawing- 
room,  naturally  enough  went  in,  and  there  found 
an  earnest  young  man  with  rather  long  hair,  an  odd 
hat  which  he  clung  to  with  some  desperation,  and 
few  graces  of  manner.  She  asked  her  godmother 
about  him  when  he  had  gone,  but  Miss  King  hadn't 
a  great  deal  of  information  to  impart. 

"His  name  is  Traill.  I  believe  he  was  a  law 
student  here  in  New  Haven  a  few  years  ago.  He 
works  with  us  in  New  York,  among  other  things. 
He's  good  in  his  way.  One  uses  these  people — with 
out  any  personal  attitude.  You  can't  always  pick 
and  choose.*' 

That  was  pretty  faint  praise,  if  it  was  praise  at 
all,  and  it  would  have  been  the  last  of  the  odd  young 
man  so  far  as  Hope  was  concerned  but  that  the 
next  afternoon,  returning  from  a  long  tramp,  solitary 
save  for  her  big  borzoi,  Fedor,  she  happened  upon 
him  again  out  near  the  end  of  Whitney  Avenue, 
and  he  turned  and  walked  with  her. 

He  interested  her  very  much  because  he  was  a  type 
altogether  new  to  her  experience.  She  thought  him 
rather  like  one  of  those  Nature's  Noblemen  that  used 

[24] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

to  abound  in  fiction  a  few  years  ago.  His  manners 
were  certainly  chaotic,  though  he  seemed  to  have  them 
a  good  deal  on  his  mind,  and  when  he  talked  he 
made  vigorous  gestures.  The  young  men  of  Hope's 
acquaintance  would  rather  have  died  than  make  ges 
tures;  they  had  carried  the  art  of  repression  almost 
to  the  height  realized  by  the  lower  order  of  mollusca. 

And  this  Mr.  Traill  was  without  question  stimulat 
ing.  He  seemed  to  have  ideas  about  the  simplest, 
most  trivial  things  you  could  bring  up,  and  his  ideas 
were  generally  pessimistic.  It  was  plain  that  he  felt 
the  world  to  be  the  very  devil  of  -a  place.  He  re 
minded  Hope  of  an  electric  bath — all  energy  and 
prickles.  She  wished  he  wouldn't  so  continually 
say,  "I  suppose  that's  heresy  to  you  people  in 
society,"  and  she  wished  he  wouldn't  fidget  about  so 
much  over  which  side  of  her  he  ought  to  walk  on; 
but  she  was  thrilled  by  the  way  he  flew  at  casual  con 
versational  topics  and  made  them  texts  for  a  brief 
ferocious  sermon. 

They  reached  her  corner — Sache,m  Street — much 
too  soon  for  her  liking,  though  the  walk  had  in  fact 
been  a  long  one,  so  she  asked  him  to  come  in  for  a  cup 
of  tea.  But  very  much  to  her  surprise  he  refused. 

"Your  aunt — or  whatever  she  is — Miss  King, 
doesn't  like  me,"  he  said,  bluntly.  If  she  had  had  her 
wits  about  her  she  would  have  protested  that  the 
reason  was  insufficient,  even  if  true,  but  she  was  so 
taken  aback  that  she  let  him  escape  without  a  word 
and  went  on  home  a  little  angry. 

[25] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

Two  days  later  they  met  again,  and  once  more, 
so  far  as  Hope  was  concerned,  by  the  purest  accident, 
though  as  Traill  caught  her  up  from  behind  it  is 
humanly  possible  that  he  had  been  on  the  lookout. 
It  was  in  Prospect  Street  out  beyond  the  observatory. 

Hope  was  startled  and  rather  excited,  for  it 
happened  that  she  had  been  thinking  of  the  young 
man  with  the  ideas,  and  wishing  he  was  there  to 
entertain  her  with  them.  She  felt  as  if  she  had 
called  him  out  of  space  in  some  magic  Oriental 
fashion,  and  she  felt  that  the  thing  was  becoming 
a  kind  of  adventure. 

Mr.  Traill  seemed  this  time  disposed  to  be  more 
personal  in  his  conversation,  but  she  soon  had  him 
off  that.  It  was  easy  enough:  a  question  or  two 
about  their  previous  talk  and  he  was  declaiming 
and  sawing  the  air  with  awkward  gestures.  She  had 
again  that  electric-bath  sensation  and  reveled  in  it. 
Once  during  their  walk  she  was  aware  of  a  familiar 
figure  across  the  street,  and  saw  turned  in  her  direc 
tion  a  face  of  astonishment  and  innocent  delight — 
the  face  of  Miss  Ethel  Goffe.  That  dashed  her  a  bit, 
for  Traill  had  been  at  the  moment  in  one  of  his 
most  hectic  outbursts,  and  she  knew  she  was  in  for 
some  mild  chaffing  later  on,  but  she  soon  forgot 
Miss  Goffe,  in  the  consideration  of  the  pestilential 
and  blood-sucking  depravity  of  something  called 
Capital. 

Altogether,  she  had,  as  on  that  first  day,  a  blissful 
time,  and  would  have  liked  it  to  last  much  longer. 

[26] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Then,  too,  her  views  of  life  had  broadened  infinitely, 
she  was  quite  sure.  She  felt  much  wiser,  and,  indeed, 
rather  old  and  worn  and  sad. 

What  a  dreadful  muddle  this  world  was  in,  to  be 
sure! 

As  a  matter  of  sedate  fact  I  very  much  doubt  she 
had,  in  these  first  two  talks — or  shall  I  say  lectures? 
— got  anything  but  the  vaguest  and  most  chaotic 
notions  out  of  the  revolutionary  Mr.  Traill.  It  had 
been  a  novel  species  of  entertainment  to  her,  and, 
I  think,  no  more.  From  it,  to  be  sure,  she  may  have 
drawn  the  material  for  that  cynically  analytical 
mood  what  time  Anastasia  Mary  delivered  her 
annual  swan  song,  and  pretty  certainly  she  picked 
from  the  debris  at  least  one  concrete  fact  to  reflect 
briefly  upon — the  fact  that  more  than  half  the  young 
women  of  these  United  States  are  engaged  in  gainful 
occupation.  But  she  might  as  well  have  happened 
upon  that  item  of  interest  in  a  newspaper. 

At  the  end  of  their  walk  she  shook  hands  with 
Mr.  Traill  and  said  she  had  been  interested  in  what 
he  had  said.  She  didn't,  as  before,  ask  him  into  the 
house  because,  in  the  first  place,  being  still  a  school 
girl,  she  was  not  supposed  to  have  men  callers 
(though  that  rule  had  more  than  once  been  broken), 
and,  in  the  second  place,  she  had  been  displeased 
with  his  former  refusal.  But  this  time  Traill  took  the 
matter  into  his  own  hands.  Being  inexpert  in  social 
conventions,  he  may  have  thought  one  invitation 
stood  for  all  time.  He  said: 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"Look  here!  I  want  to  see  you  again,  and  your 
Miss  King  doesn't  like  me." 

Hope  asked:  "How  do  you  know  that?" 

And  the  man  gave  his  head  an  impatient  shake. 
"I  don't  have  to  be  told.  It's  plain  enough.  She 
never  liked  me — though  she's  willing  enough  to  let 
me  do  a  good  deal  of  work  for  her  organization. 
We  don't  agree  about  a  good  many  rather  big  things. 
Let  it  go  at  that !  The  point  is  how  am  I  going  to  see 
you?  Do  you  always  take  a  walk  in  the  afternoon?" 

That  was  somewhat  blunter  than  such  overtures 
are  commonly  expressed,  and  Hope  was  a  little 
embarrassed  by  it,  and  turned  pink.  She  took  an 
instant  to  consider  whether  after  all  she  had  not 
had  enough  of  this  odd  young  man  who  might  quite 
possibly,  if  over-encouraged,  become  rather  a  nui 
sance.  And  as  she  stands  there  under  the  trees 
of  Hillhouse  Avenue,  considering,  and  looking,  by 
the  way,  very  lovely  indeed  and  astonishingly  like  the 
marble  Athene  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  I  seem  to  see 
that  the  whole  course  of  her  future  life  not  improbably 
hangs  upon  her  casual  word.  And  I  reflect  that  the 
course  of  many  human  lives  is  determined  by  such 
absurd  accidents,  and  I  am  appalled. 

Hope  said  slowly,  and  as  if  something  within  her 
was  unwilling  to  let  the  words  go: 

"Yes — I  usually  do  take  a  walk  about  half  past 
four.  Not  to-morrow,  for  I've  a  lot  to  do,  but  the 
next  day — Thursday,  is  it?  I'll  walk  out  Whitney 
Avenue." 

[28] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Then  she  nodded  to  him  rather  abruptly  and 
turned  to  go  into  the  house.  And  so  it  was  the  two 
met  on  the  afternoon  of  Hope's  last  day  at  school. 

He  glanced  rather  sharply  at  her  flushed  face 
as  he  fell  into  step  beside  her,  and  said: 

"You  don't  look  pleased.  Have  I  done  any 
thing?  Do  you  want  me  to  clear  out?" 

She  shook  her  head,  but  presently  said  with  some 
violence: 

"I  told  a  lie  to  get  out  here  alone  to-day.  My — 
somebody  wanted  to  come  with  me.  I  told  a  lie. 
I  needn't  have.  I  could  have  avoided  it.  It  came 
out  quite  instinctively.  And  I  hate  myself  for  it. 
I  detest  lies." 

Traill  attempted  to  say  something  soothing — 
that  there  were  lies  and  lies,  that  everybody  told 
them  more  or  less,  that  only  lies  meant  to  hurt 
were  despicable.  But  Hope  didn't  want  to  be 
soothed  in  that  fashion.  She  said  in  an  imperative 
tone  that  sounded  angry: 

"Never  mind  all  that.  Talk  to  me.  Tell  me 
things!  Make  it  up  to  me  about  my  lie!  I've 
been  thinking  about  what  you  said  those  first  two 
days,  and  it  has  interested  me  a  great  deal — that  is, 
I'm  sure  it  would  interest  me  if  I  could  get  it  straight 
and  clear  in  my  mind.  Make  it  clear  to  me!  I've 
a  kind  of  feeling  that  I'm  on  the  edge  of  a  discovery 
like  Columbus  and  Galileo.  Talk!  .  .  .  You're 
always  flying  at  what  you  call  the  Established 
Order  and  blackguarding  it.  Tell  me  in  words  of 

[29] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

one  syllable  what's  wrong.  Remember!  I  don't 
know  anything  at  all.  I'm  as  ignorant  as  a  baby. 
What's  wrong  with  the  world?" 

She  propounded  that  terrific  question  as  con 
fidently  as  she  would  have  asked  a  mathematician, 
"What  is  five-times-six?"  And  even  young  Mr. 
Traill  was  abashed  before  it — but  not  for  long.  He 
made  a  passionate  gesture. 

"Everything!  It's  rotten  from  top  to  bottom— 
from  pole  to  pole.  Its  aim  is  wrong,  its  methods 
are  wrong,  its  heart  is  wrong.  And  there's  no 
health  in  it." 

"Dear  me,"  said  Hope.  "That's  rather  complete, 
isn't  it?  I  should  think —  No,  go  on!  Go  on! 
What  do  you  mean  by  the  world's  aim  being  wrong?" 

"I  mean  just  what  I  say.  People  ought  to  want 
freedom.  They  ought  to  get  down  on  their  knees 
and  pray  for  it.  They  ought  to  want  it  so  hard  that 
they'd  be  in  physical  agony  for  the  lack  of  it.  They 
ought  to  thirst  and  starve  for  it.  They  ought  to 
stand  up  together  in  a  gigantic  yearning  army  and 
take  it.  ...  Instead  of  which  they  run  about  in  little 
circles  and  yammer  about  wages  and  agreements 
and  interest  and  votes  and  the  fair  division  of 
property.  .  .  .  Property!  that  everlasting  fetish  of 
property.  The  rich  man  has  it  in  tons,  in  square 
miles,  and  yet  he  hasn't  enough:  the  poor  man  howls 
that  he  isn't  given  his  fair  share.  If  they  dream  at 
night  they  dream  of  money  or  of  some  kind  of 
beastly  happiness  that  money  can  buy  for  them. 

[30] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

They  never  even  think  of  the  word  freedom,  or  if 
they  do  they  mean  freedom  to  gobble  more  wealth — 
more  property.  Freedom's  just  a  doorway  to  them 
— a  means,  not  the  summit  and  end  of  all  things." 

He  made  a  little  pause  just  there — perhaps  for 
breath — and  Hope  jumped  into  it. 

"I'd  always  thought,"  she  said,  looking  puzzled 
and  anxious — "I'd  always  thought  this  was  a  free 
country.  I  thought  that  was  what  America  stood 
for.  People  say  so." 

"Very  few  people,"  said  young  Mr.  Traill,  "have 
ever  even  dreamed  of  what  freedom  is."  He  repeat 
ed  a  list  of  names — Zeno  the  stoic,  Rabelais,  Fenelon, 
Godwin,  Proudhon,  William  Thompson,  Josiah 
Warren,  Hess,  Grim,  Max  Stirner.  But  they  were 
strange  names  to  the  graduate  of  the  Misses  Wanley's 
Select  School  for  Girls,  and  meant  nothing  to  her. 
She  shook  her  head  a  little  pathetically. 

"Could  you  make  it  plainer?  It  sounds  such  a 
long  way  off!" 

Traill  gave  her  a  quick  side  glance  of  impatience, 
but  she  smiled  at  him,  disarmingly,  and  he  softened, 
and  after  a  moment  they  laughed  together. 

"You  see,"  he  explained,  "things  have  got  into 
a  most  terrible  mess.  I  can't  see  that  it's  anybody's 
fault  in  particular.  It  has  just  happened.  This 
idea  of  property  (belongings,  worldly  goods — money 
if  you  like  the  word)  has  blinded  and  crazed  every 
one.  And,  such  as  it  is,  there's  no  doubt  it's  badly 
distributed  and  that  it's  going  from  bad  to  worse. 

[31] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

The  rich  have  got  too  much  of  it,  together  with 
the  power  it  gives,  and  the  poor  too  little.  That  was 
well  enough  —  up  to  a  certain  breaking  -  point — 
under  the  old  feudal  system.  Social  classes  were 
hard  and  fast  things.  There  weren't  newspapers 
or  schools  or  votes  or  walking  delegates.  The  poor 
expected  to  be  poor,  and  that  was  an  end  of  it.  But 
you  remember  there  came  a  breaking -point  even 
under  those  conditions.  And  now  that  there  is 
education  of  a  kind,  now  that  there's  a  popular 
press,  now  that  labor  has  begun  to  think — well, 
there's  another  breaking  -  point  ahead,  I  fancy. 
Another  social  war.  Another  French  Revolution." 

"And  after  that?"  she  asked  him. 

"After  that,"  said  Traill,  very  soberly,  "freedom, 
perhaps.  A  chance  for  it,  anyhow.  After  that 
great  leveling,  when  property  is  no  longer  gathered 
into  big  terrifying  heaps  here  and  there,  but  is  spread 
about  under  foot,  perhaps  it  will  lose  its  fascination 
for  the  men  who  are  living  then.  Perhaps  they'll 
realize  then  that  all  the  means  of  life  can  be  like  air, 
something  unconsciously  made  use  of — unconsidered. 
Then  there'll  grow  up  a  race  that's  truly  free — free 
by  mutual  agreement — from  all  the  thousand  and  one 
tyrannies  that  tie  us  down  to  earth  now  very  much 
as  Gulliver  was  tied  with  a  thousand  and  one  threads 
by  the  Lilliputians.  Free  to  develop,  each  one  of 
them,  as  his  own  nature  indicates  and  permits. 
That  '11  be  a  race  of  giants,  Miss  Standish." 

It  was  a  happy  stroke  of  Traill 's,  this  large  swift 

[32] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

picture  of  overthrow  and  regeneration.  If  he  had 
been  trying  to  make  a  convert  to  anarchism  out  of 
Hope  Standish  (which  is  highly  improbable),  he 
couldn't  have  gone  about  it  better.  The  picture 
made  the  same  appeal  to  her  mind  that  a  nature 
myth  cleverly  turned  into  a  fairy  story  does  to  a 
child's  mind.  It  was  something  concrete  and  poetic 
set  down  in  the  midst  of  an  argumentative  wilder 
ness. 

She  beat  her  hands  together  softly  like  one  who 
applauds. 

"That's  splendid!"  she  said.  "I  like  that.  Now 
I  see  what  you  mean  by  freedom.  I  understand 
now.  But  tell  me  more.  How  will  it  work? 
How  will  they  make  it  go?"  She  asked  a  few  not 
unintelligent  questions,  and  Traill  outlined  to  her, 
briefly  and  as  simply  as  he  could,  the  elements  of 
the  ideal  anarchistic  society — the  replacing  of  the 
state  by  an  interwoven  network  of  small  mobile 
associations,  the  abolition  of  property  in  its  present 
sense,  the  exchange  of  labor,  the  arbitration  of  con 
tests,  etc.  He  had  the  doctrine  at  his  tongue's  end, 
of  course,  and  put  it  forth  with  a  glibness  that 
seemed  like  true  eloquence  to  Hope,  who  had  scarcely 
ever  heard  of  anarchism  or  socialism  and  thought 
they  meant  bomb-throwing.  He  had  found  a  ready 
listener.  She  never  knew  of  the  flimsy  bridges 
they  skipped  across  or  the  chasms  they  leaped  in 
traversing  this  delightful  Utopia.  It  seemed  magnifi 
cent  to  her — a  new  undreamed-of  world;  and  she 

[33] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

began  to  look  upon  young  Mr.  Traill  with  not  a  little 
awe,  as  a  kind  of  beardless  Moses. 

She  wanted  to  know  when  he  expected  this  social 
revolution  to  take  place — whether  in  their  own 
lifetime  or  not.  But  that  question  he  couldn't 
answer. 

"I  don't  know.  Nobody  knows.  Most  people 
think  it  will  never  happen  at  all — not,  that  is,  in  any 
sudden  violent  form.  They  expect  the  change  to 
come  by  slow  degrees — gradual  enlightenment.  / 
don't.  The  French  Syndicalists  have  a  word  for  it: 
the  general  strike — 'la  greve  generate.'  That  sounds 
violent  enough,  and  the  rankers  think  it  means 
violence,  but  their  leaders  don't.  Heaven  knows  just 
what  they  expect.  .  .  .  It's  a  kind  of  idea.  .  .  .  the 
Millennium,  perhaps.  .  .  .  But  it's  a  good  idea. 
They  at  least  have  freedom  before  their  eyes.'* 

Hope  was  struck  by  a  sudden  thought. 

"There's  Aunt  Alice — my  godmother — Miss  King, 
you  know!  Aren't  she  and  her  people — these 
suffragists — aren't  they  after  freedom,  too?  I  don't 
know  much  about  what  she  calls  The  Cause,  but  I've 
always  had  the  idea  that  they  wanted  to  make  the 
world  better  by — well,  by  voting  about  it  ...  all 
that  sort  of  thing." 

"Oh  yes,"  Traill  said.  "They're  after  a  good 
thing — as  far  as  they  go — as  far  as  they  see.  I  work 
with  them  in  New  York."  He  made  one  of  his 
lunging  gestures. 

"Do  you  see  that  tree  yonder?    It  was  in  a  bad 

[34] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

way.  It  was  dying,  so  the  people  who  owned  it  went 
and  got  a  saw  and  cut  off  a  big  limb  that  was  worse 
than  the  rest.  They  did  that  last  autumn  or  winter. 
But  when  spring  came  it  was  plain  that  they'd  wast 
ed  their  work.  They  hadn't  cut  far  enough  back. 
They  hadn't  been  radical  enough.  And  that's  the 
trouble  with  these  women.  They're  all  looking  at 
one  spot  on  the  tree  and  working  like  the  devil  to  get 
it  made  right,  but  the  real  trouble  is  behind  their 
backs — farther  down  the  trunk." 

"You  work  with  them,"  Hope  said,  and  he 
shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"One  does  what  one  can.  It's  a  good  cause.  It 
will  do  good.  It  has  done  good  where  it  has  got 
what  it  wanted.  7  can't  overturn  the  world  with  my 
two  hands." 

"You  could  preach  what  you  really  believe!" 
she  said.  Her  face  showed  disappointment  in  him; 
and  perhaps  Traill  saw  it,  for  he  gave  her  a  wry 
smile. 

"Oh,  I  do  that  too.  You  needn't  think  I  don't. 
That's  the  real  thing  to  me.  This  suffrage  work  is  an 
extra.  There's  a  few  of  us  ...  we  try  to  follow  the 
Star.  You  haven't  read  Max  Stirner?  No — of 
course  not.  He  has  a  word  .  .  .  the  'Beautiful 
Aristocracy' — free  people,  free  of  law  and  respon 
sibility  and  tradition — the  thousand  and  one  threads. 
.  .  .  Individuals  free  to  develop  their  natures  to 
the  very  utmost  .  .  .  mountain  peaks,  each  of  them, 
not  pebbles  grinding  each  other  shapeless  in  the  bed 

[35] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

of  a  stream.  .  .  .  Well,  one  can  have  a  try  at  it  even 
in  this  present-day  slave  gang;  an  imperfect  try, 
if  you  like,  but  a  try,  nevertheless.  One  perhaps 
gets  glimpses  of  the  Star  now  and  then,  and  that's 
something." 

Hope  drew  a  long  breath. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "that's  something — it's — it's 
magnificent,  I  think."  But  after  glowing  silently  a 
moment  she  turned  practical  again.  She  was  full  of 
curiosity.  There  were  a  million  things  she  burned 
to  know. 

"Tell  me,  what  are  the  responsibilities — tradi 
tions  you  try  to  do  without?  It  must  be  hard.  I 
want  to  know." 

Traill  looked  doubtful.     "  It's  a  pretty  long  story." 

"Marriage?"  she  pressed  him.  She  hadn't  meant 
to  say  that  word  at  all.  It  leaped  up  all  at  once 
out  of  some  mental  process  obscure  to  her;  and  she 
was  a  little  frightened  when  she  had  said  it,  and 
turned  red  and  gave  her  companion  a  swift,  furtive, 
sidelong  glance.  But  Traill  didn't  seem  to  be  in  the 
least  embarrassed. 

"Marriage  by  all  means!"  said  he.  "If  there  is 
any  hideous  and  debasing  slavery  in  this  world 
lower  than  the  others  it  is  what  people  miscall  holy 
matrimony.  .  .  .  You  take  two  happy  inexpe 
rienced  young  people  who  like  the  color  of  each 
other's  eyes  or  the  sound  of  each  other's  voices — 
strangers,  total  strangers  —  and  you  tie  'em  to 
gether  with  a  rope  and  say  to  'em:  'There  you 

[SO] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

are,  fastened  for  life!  You  don't  know  anything 
about  each  other.  You  may  find  out  you're  alto 
gether  unsuited.  You  may  be  wretched  inside  of  a 
month,  but  never  mind,  tied  you  are  and  tied  you 
stay.  The  only  way  you  can  get  loose  again  is  to 
face  a  public  scandal.' . . .  Bah!  it's  the  most  maniacal 
folly  that  was  ever  imagined,  and  the  wickedest. 
It's  an  insult  to  love.  It's  filthy.  And  yet  that's 
the  way  we  go  about  the  most  important  activity 
in  the  world.  That's  the  way  we  breed  our  race." 

Hope  leaned  over  the  rail  of  the  bridge  on  which 
they  were  standing  and  looked  down  at  the  water  of 
Lake  Whitney.  The  institution  of  matrimony  was 
receiving  some  hard  knocks  on  the  battlefield  of  her 
mind  this  day:  first  on  the  emotional  side  in  that 
odd  schoolbook  Ann  Veronica,  then  on  the  side  of 
reason  and  logic.  It  was  excessively  interesting,  and 
she  would  have  liked  to  ask  a  great  many  questions, 
but  all  at  once  found  that  she  couldn't.  Some 
thing  within  her  quite  suddenly  flew  into  the  most 
dreadful  state  of  agitation  and  embarrassment,  and 
she  became  aware  of  a  longing  to  hide  her  face,  to 
run  away,  to  take  refuge  in  flight  from  she  didn't 
quite  know  what.  She  was  for  a  moment  in  a  real 
agony  of  nervous  fright,  but  she  made  a  great  effort 
and  forced  herself  to  turn  with  a  calm  face  to  where 
Traill  stood  behind  her.  She  said: 

"Yes!  Yes;  I  see.  You  must  tell  me  more, 
another  time — more  of  the  things  you're  a  rebel 
about — the  other  laws  and — and  responsibilities 

[37] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

you  do  away  with.  Now  I  want  to  hear — "  She 
searched  rather  desperately  in  her  mind.  "Oh 
yes!  You  were  talking  the  other  day  about 
what  a  terrible  time  working  people  have,  and 
how  they're  abused.  Tell  me  more  about  that. 
You  don't  mind  skipping  about,  do  you?" 

He  didn't.  He  was  by  nature  an  abrupt  person 
himself.  So  as  they  turned  their  faces  homeward  he 
told  her  things  that  had  come  before  his  eyes  in  the 
industrial  world — stories  about  the  conditions  of 
employment  here  and  there — ugly  things  that  were 
new  and  shocking  to  Hope — horrors  that  stuck  in 
her  mind  forever  after. 

Once,  at  some  intolerable  picture,  she  wrung  her 
hands. 

"Oh,  why  doesn't  somebody  do  something  about 
it?  Why  do  people  allow  such  things  to  go  on?" 

"Well,  they  get  a  law  passed  now  and  then," 
Traill  said.  "Some  time  when  there's  an  unusually 
bad  fire  or  a  peculiarly  nasty  accident  so  that  the 
papers  take  it  up.  But  the  people  responsible — 
the  employers — are  greedy,  and  the  public  is  lazy. 
When  you  read  in  your  paper  every  morning  of  half 
a  dozen  murders  and  three  railway  accidents  and 
forty  deaths  in  a  mine  or  a  factory  fire  you  grow 
used  to  it.  You  get  into  the  way  of  thinking  that 
all  those  things  have  got  to  happen — a  kind  of  by 
product  of  civilization." 

"It's  murder!"  Hope  said.     "It's  just  murder." 

But  Traill  shook  his  head.     "The  law  doesn't  say 

[38] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

so.  The  law  says  that  when  a  starving,  half -crazed 
fanatic  whose  wife  has  been  mangled  in  a  factory  be 
cause  there  were  no  safety  devices,  and  whose  daugh 
ter  left  a  five -dollar  department  -  store  job  to  go 
the  Lord  knows  where,  and  who  was  thrown  out  of 
employment  and  black-listed  himself  because  he  tried 
to  organize  his  fellows  for  self-protection,  the  law 
says  this  man  is  a  murderer  when  he  loses  the  re 
maining  half  of  his  brains  and  pulls  a  gun  or  throws 
a  bomb.  But  it  says  nothing  about  the  people  who 
drove  him  to  do  what  he  did — the  factory -owner  and 
the  department-store  head  and  the  building  com 
pany — not  to  mention  a  gang  of  public  officials  who 
are  trained  to  look  the  other  way." 

"Then  it's  pretty  clear  that  we  need  new  laws," 
said  Hope. 

And  Traill  nodded.  "Oh  yes!  'The  law's  a 
hass'  right  enough.  There's  no  doubt  of  that" 

"Tell  me!"  she  said,  abruptly,  "Aunt  Alice 
King  and  those  suffragists,  or  suffragettes,  or  what 
ever  they  call  themselves — is  that  why  they  want 
to  vote — to  get  things  like  that  made  better?" 

"It's  one  of  the  reasons,"  he  said.  "Well,  yes, 
I  suppose  it's  one  of  the  chief  reasons.  Of  course, 
they're  concerned  chiefly  with  their  own  sex,  but 
then  it's  their  sex  that  gets  the  worst  of  it  in  the 
industrial  world." 

"Then  they're  trying  to  do  a  splendid  thing, 
aren't  they?"  she  said,  thoughtfully;  and  Traill 
nodded  again. 

[39] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"They  are.  Though,  as  I  told  you  before,  they 
don't  begin  far  enough  back  on  the  tree." 

"No,"  Hope  agreed,  still  thoughtfully.  "No,  of 
course." 

She  glanced  across  the  street,  for  they  were  in 
Whitney  Avenue  now,  and  all  at  once  became  aware 
of  her  godmother,  walking  in  the  opposite  direction. 
Miss  King  regarded  the  two  through  her  spectacles 
with  a  mild  astonishment,  nodded,  and  passed  on  her 
way,  but  Hope  said  in  a  kind  of  groan: 

"Now  it's  done!  She's  caught  me."  She  felt  the 
hot  flush  sweep  up  over  her  neck  and  cheeks  to  the 
edge  of  her  hair.  She  thought  she  blushed  all  over, 
down  to  her  very  toes,  but,  as  that  is  a  physiological 
impossibility,  she  probably  didn't. 

"Wasn't  that  Miss  King?"  Traill  asked  her,  after 
a  moment. 

And  she  said:  "Yes.  Never  mind,  though!  It 
doesn't  really  matter." 

He  wondered  what  it  was  that  didn't  matter,  for 
he  had  forgotten  about  her  lie,  but  she  gave  him 
no  chance  to  pursue  the  thought.  She  asked  when 
he  meant  to  go  back  to  New  York,  and  he  said : 

"To-morrow — worse  luck!  But  I  may  be  able 
to  come  to  New  Haven  again  hi  a  fortnight." 

"I  may  be  in  New  York  myself  before  then,"  she 
told  him.  "I'm  rather  hoping  to  visit  my  god 
mother  for  a  while,  and  then  I  dare  say  I  shall  go  on 
to  my  cousins  the  Darnleys,  if  they  want  me.  They're 
only  second  cousins,  but  they're  very  nice  about  the 

[40] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

relationship,  and  I  have  a  standing  invitation 
there.  They  took  me  abroad  with  them  three  years 
ago." 

"I've  met  Mrs.  Darnley,  I  think,"  said  Traill. 
"At  the  Trevor  Hulls'." 

Hope  said,  "Yes?"  politely  enough,  but  she  gave 
him  a  look  of  such  surprise  that  Traill  turned  quite 
red  and  haughty. 

"Why  shouldn't  I  be  at  the  Trevor  Hulls'?" 
he  demanded.  "Did  you  think  I  spent  all  my  time 
in  a  slum?" 

And  Hope  frowned  and  said :  "  I'm  afraid  I  hadn't 
given  any  thought  at  all  to  your  social  career.  It 
merely  seemed  odd  to  me,  at  the  moment,  that  you, 
who  have  real  things  to  think  about,  should  be 
bothering  with  people  who  are  just  fashionable  and 
nothing  else." 

He  seemed  to  realize,  at  this,  that  he  had  been 
rude,  and  apologized  and  was  so  humble  and  abashed 
and  rather  nice  about  it  that  she  forgave  him  on  the 
spot  and  accused  herself  of  wanton  brutality,  since 
after  all  it  was  very  bad  manners  to  have  looked  sur 
prised. 

So  they  came  to  Sachem  Street  and  turned  the 
corner  to  her  door. 

"You  won't  come  in?"  she  asked;  and  Traill  shook 
his  head.  She  became  suddenly  aware  that  his  eyes 
were  fixed  upon  her  in  a  new,  odd,  disturbing  fashion. 
(It  wasn't  new,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  but  it  was  the 
first  time  she  had  noticed  it).  He  looked  at  her  with 

[41] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

a  regard  of  human  interest — an  acutely  personal 
regard,  and  she  was  conscious  of  a  gentle,  not  un 
pleasant  perturbation. 

He  said:  "We  must  meet  again,  you  know — in 
New  York.  I  can't — I  don't  want  to — just  lose 
sight  of  you  like  this,  altogether." 

"No,  I  don't  either,"  she  said  quickly.  "I  mean 
—we  must  meet  in  New  York,  of  course.  You  must 
look  me  up.  It's  silly,  your  thinking  Aunt  Alice 
doesn't  like  you." 

He  seemed  to  be  about  to  say  something  more, 
but  Hope  had  the  youthful  instinct  for  flight  in  the 
face  of  even  the  slightest  atmosphere  of  emotion, 
and  checked  him.  She  put  out  her  hand  and  pressed 
his  with  it,  hard — as  hard  as  she  could.  She  said: 

"Good-by.  It  has  been  splendid — like  somebody 
opening  a  door.  ...  I  can't  thank  you  enough." 
And  she  turned  abruptly  away  and  left  him. 


CHAPTER  III 

MISS  KING  entered  her  goddaughter's  room 
somewhat  later  and  found  that  young  lady 
standing  by  a  window  and  looking  out  into  the  sun 
set  sky. 

"Your  door  was  ajar,"  Miss  King  said,  "so  I  just 
popped  in."  Hope  smiled  over  her  shoulder,  and 
the  elder  woman  crossed  to  where  she  stood.  She 
had  come  in  for  information,  it  appeared,  and 
characteristically  lost  no  time  in  getting  it. 

"Was  that  Mr.  Traill  you  were  walking  with?  I 
thought  he'd  gone  back  to  New  York." 

"He's  going  to-morrow,"  said  Hope.  "At  least 
he  said  so.  ...  We  met  in  the  street,"  she  added, 
and  was  instantly  angry  with  herself,  for  she  had 
meant  to  confess  about  her  rather  clandestine  goings 
on.  As  she  had  said  to  Traill,  she  hated  lies,  and 
yet,  for  some  odd  reason,  she  seemed  to  be  able  to 
speak  nothing  but  lies  or  indirections  when  his  name 
came  up. 

"He's  an  odd  young  man,"  Miss  King  said,  peer 
ing  out  at  the  western  sky.  "I'm  not  sure  I  alto 
gether  like  him.  In  fact,  I  think  I'm  sure  that 
I  don't.  What  did  he  talk  about?" 

4  [43] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"Oh  .  .  .  labor  conditions  .  .  .  exploitation  (is 
that  the  word?)  .  .  .  and  how  wrong  things  are  in 
the  world.  That  kind  of  thing.  .  .  .  He  rather 
thinks  a  social  revolution  is  coming." 

Miss  King  nodded. 

"Yes.  I  remember  his  going  on,  one  day,  at  some 
length.  Socialism  is  his  'line,'  I  fancy — or  is  it 
anarchism?" 

"I  think  it's  anarchism,  though  I'm  not  sure 
I  know  the  difference.  He  wants  a  new  state  of 
affairs  altogether — a  clean  sweep.  Freedom.  Any 
quantity  of  freedom,  and  no  law  worth  mention 
ing." 

Miss  King  turned  her  eyes  rather  thoughtfully 
upon  her  goddaughter  and  said  "Oho!"  But  Hope 
was  looking  away  and  seemed  not  to  hear.  She  said : 

"You  know,  I  like  talk  of  that  kind.  Ideas.  I 
like  it  very  much.  I  never  knew  anybody  before 
with  ideas — that  is,  no  one  who  talked  about  them. 
It  was  .  .  .  tremendous.  .  .  .  When  I  think  of  the 
idiots  I've  wasted  my  time  with!  .  .  .  Well,  they 
make  your  Mr.  Traill  seem  pretty  well  worth  while." 

Miss  King  made  an  exclamation  of  protest. 

"Don't  you  call  him  my  Mr.  Traill!  Don't  you 
do  it!  To  be  sure  he  works  with  us  in  New  York, 
and  he  works  well,  too.  I'll  say  that  for  him.  .  .  . 
But  anarchism!  God  bless  us!  I  can't  follow 
him  into  that  wilderness.  Look  here!" 

She  regarded  the  girl  with  a  new  interest — half 
quizzical,  half  grave. 


THE    OPENING   DOOR 

"You've  been  getting  your  eyes  opened  .  .  . 
rather  like  a  kitten.  Well,  that's  all  right.  It  comes 
in  its  good  time.  I'm  glad  it  has  come.  These 
Traills  have  their  uses,  it  appears.  But  just  because 
you've  learnt,  all  at  once,  that  there  are  injustice 
and  slavery  and  suffering  in  this  complicated  world 
don't  you  go  running  out  to  wag  a  red  flag!  And 
because  it's  this  particular  man  who  has  told  you 
a  few  facts  don't  you  go  thinking  he's  any  Moses 
and  Lohengrin  rolled  into  one.  .  .  .  Because  he 
isn't." 

"He  knows  Caroline  Darnley,"  Hope  said,  incon- 
sequently.  "At  least,  he  said  he'd  met  her — at  the 
Trevor  Hulls'." 

Miss  King  betrayed  a  mild  astonishment. 

"At  the  Trevor  Hulls'.  What  in  the  world  was 
he  doing  in  that  house?"  Then  she  nodded. 

"Oh  yes!  I  remember.  Nora  Hull  had  a  period 
last  winter  of  liking  to  imagine  herself  serious. 
Seriousness  is  rather  fashionable  since  suffrage  was 
*  taken  up.'  She  wanted  me  to  come  and  give  a 
couple  of  afternoon  talks  on  The  Cause  at  her  house. 
I  know  that  set  of  hers.  It's  no  good.  So  I  wouldn't 
go.  I  said  I'd  send  a  man,  and  I  sent  Traill,  who  was 
delighted.  He's  a  frightful  little  snob,  you  know, 
in  spite  of  his  anarchistic  principles.  I  dare  say 
Nora  let  him  come  to  one  of  her  Friday  night  musical 
squashes,  by  way  of  being  decent,  and  he  met  your 
cousin  there." 

Hope  turned  her  head  away  and  frowned  out  of 

[45] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

the  window.  She  felt  the  amazingly  ready  color 
steal  up  across  her  cheeks.  "Frightful  little  snob" 
was  neither  a  nice  name  nor  was  it  just  to  apply  to 
that  young  warrior  of  revolutionary  ideals.  Miss 
King  was  taking  a  wrong  tack  if  she  had  only  known 
it.  But  she  didn't. 

"You  see,"  she  explained,  "we  have  to  recruit  our 
helpers  where  we  can  find  them.  Every  cause  has 
to  do  that,  and  every  cause  has  a  certain  number 
of  supporters  who  are  working  half  for  their  own 
advancement.  This  Mr.  Traill  is  ambitious  to  get 
on.  He  wants  to  know  what  he  would  call  'the 
right  people,'  and  the  woman  suffrage  movement  has 
given  him  a  chance.  He  isn't  the  only  one,  you  may 
be  sure.  There  are  some  women  I  might  name 
if  I  cared  to.  It  seems  an  odd  kind  of  social  ladder, 
doesn't  it?  But  anything  for  a  foothold.  ...  Of 
course  we  don't  care.  They  do  their  work,  and  some 
of  them  do  it  very  well,  too." 

Hope  turned  about  with  flushed  cheeks  and  bright 
eyes. 

"I  don't  believe  Mr.  Traill  is  a — a — what  you 
say,  at  all.  If  you  could  only  hear  him  talk!  Good 
heavens!  It's  all  about  the  working  man  and 
woman — the  under-dog.  It's  nothing  but  equality 
and  freedom.  Freedom  for  everybody.  He  may 
want  to  know  nice  people.  Why  in  the  world 
shouldn't  he?  But  as  for  the  ordinary  vulgar  sort 
of  social  ambition!  .  .  .  You'd  laugh  if  you  knew 
him  better." 

[46] 


THE    OPENING   DOOR 

One  has  an  idea  that  this  wasn't  altogether — 
not  quite  altogether — sincere.  Or  perhaps  she  was 
trying  to  convince  herself  and  spoke  with  additional 
vehemence  to  that  end.  Who  knows? 

Miss  King  pursed  her  lips  as  if  she  were  going 
to  whistle.  But  she  was  a  wise  woman,  after  her 
kind,  and  saw  that  she  had  made  a  mistake,  and 
forbore  returning  to  her  folly.  She  nodded  as  if  the 
subject  had  lost  interest  to  her. 

"Maybe  so!  Maybe  so!  I  don't,  after  all,  know 
the  man  intimately.  Dare  say  I'm  wrong." 

She  may  have  made  her  reflections.  The  fellow 
was  gone — or  as  good  as  gone — and  it  wasn't  likely 
the  two  would  meet  in  New  York  if  Hope  should 
come  there.  She'd  try  to  make  sure  they  didn't.  .  . 
In  any  case,  these  first  flushes  of  enthusiasm  don't 
last  long.  Girls  are  like  babies.  Divert  their  at 
tention,  and  they  forget. 

"I  left  a  small  tract  here  on  your  table  after 
you  went  out,"  she  said.  "The  ban  is  lifted,  I  take 
it,  now  that  you've  finished  school.  I  thought  you 
might  like  to  have  a  look,  some  idle  hour,  at  what 
has  been  done  for  women  within  the  past  few  years, 
and  what  we're  trying  to  do.  It's  only  a  pamphlet. 
Did  you  see  it?" 

"Oh  yes!"  said  Hope.  "I've  been  reading  it. 
I  shall  finish  it  to-night  before  I  go  to  bed."  She 
looked  up  and  nodded  her  head.  "It's  a  big  thing — • 
what  you're  working  for,  Aunt  Alice.  You're  for 
freedom,  too,  aren't  you?" 

[47] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"We  are,"  said  Miss  King,  taking  note  of  that 
word  "too." 

"I  wonder,"  said  the  girl,  "if  you're  beginning  far 
enough  back  on  the  tree." 

Her  godmother  frowned  at  her. 

"'The  tree?'     'Far  enough  back  on  the  tree'?" 

But  Hope  shook  her  head. 

"  That's  a  long  story.  I  mean,  are  you  going  deep 
enough  down?  Haven't  we  got  to  begin  at  the 
beginning — give  men  and  women  both  a  fair  start 
again?  Is  it  any  good  trying  to  cure  things  from 
the  top?" 

Miss  King  cocked  an  observant  eye  and  seemed  to 
recognize  the  handiwork  of  a  third  person  here. 
But  she  was  still  wise.  She  said: 

"Well,  failing  another  flood  and  another  ark  and 
another  Noah  family,  I'm  afraid  we've  got  to 
begin  where  we  can.  It  would  be  interesting  to 
clear  the  earth  of  all  but  two  healthy  families  and 
start  afresh,  but  that  doesn't  seem  to  be  within  our 
power." 

And  Hope  conceded  an  unwilling,  "No,  I  suppose 
not."  She  wanted  to  bring  up  again  that  matter  of 
the  social  revolution,  but  decided  not  to.  She  wasn't 
quite  sure  she  could  uphold  an  argument  against  this 
efficient  lady,  and  it  would  come  to  an  argument,  she 
felt  sure.  Her  godmother  was  committed  to  a  cause, 
and  therefore  to  a  point  of  view.  She  was  old,  too — 
she  must  be  quite  fifty — and  old  people  were  always  so 
intolerant  of  views  that  weren't  their  own.  Their 

[48] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

minds'  eyes  were  dimmed  so  that  they  couldn't  pene 
trate  into  the  splendid  distances.  Hope  felt  a  mo 
ment's  pity  for  poor  dear  old  Miss  King — the  kindly 
tolerant  pity  of  the  Younger  Generation  toward 
purblind  Age.  She  felt  that  she  had  swept — or,  in 
Traill's  strong  grasp,  had  been  swept — far  beyond  the 
field  of  her  godmother's  unimaginative  labors.  But 
she  didn't  want  to  say  so.  She  wouldn't  have  hurt 
Aunt  Alice's  feelings  for  anything. 

And  besides,  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  this 
Woman  Suffrage  movement  was  a  good  thing — in 
its  way. 

Miss  King's  thoughts  seemed  to  have  moved 
rather  abruptly  on  to  another  topic  and  perhaps  to 
another  place.  They  had  a  way  of  moving  on  when 
you  least  expected  it.  She  bobbed  her  head  in  absent 
fashion,  patted  Hope's  arm,  and  started  to  leave 
the  room,  but  near  the  door  turned  for  a  mo 
ment. 

"Oh!  In  case  you  do  chance  to  finish  that  little 
pamphlet,  and  in  case  the  subject  interests  you  at 
all,  you  might  just  bear  one  thing  in  mind.  {The  need 
for  suffrage  will  seem  a  little  remote  from  women 
like  you  and  your  mother  and  your  friends.  Well, 
so  it  is.  It  will  seem  to  you  an  unnatural  right  for 
women.  Artificial.  So  it  is.  The  natural  job  for 
an  adult  woman  is  sitting  at  home  with  a  baby  in 
her  lap;  but  progress  or  civilization,  or  whatever  you 
choose  to  call  it,  has  brought  about  an  artificial  state 
of  affairs.  It  has  dragged  several  millions  of  young 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

women  away  from  the  homes  they  ought  to  be  caring 
for,  and  the  babies  they  ought  to  be  nursing.  It 
has  made  them  work  all  day — sometimes  half  the 
night  as  well — in  factories  and  sweat  shops  and 
department  stores. 

"That's  why  Woman  Suffrage  has  got  to  be  won, 
the  civilized  world  over.  It's  an  unnatural  safe 
guard  for  an  unnatural  condition/]} 

"There's  the  whole  story — or  a  very  large  part 
of  it — in  a  few  words.  Don't  you  forget  'em!" 

"I  won't  forget,"  said  Hope.     "I  promise." 

And  she  didn't  forget — not  quite.  That  rather 
odd  phrase,  "an  unnatural  safeguard  for  an  un 
natural  condition,"  recurred  dimly  to  her  mind, 
later  on  that  night,  as  she  settled  herself  to  read  in 
bed  after  an  exciting  dinner  and  a  subsequent 
dull  hour  or  two  in  the  drawing-room.  For  the  New 
York  project  had  been  discussed,  and,  to  Hope's 
great  surprise,  her  mother  had  given  her  consent 
almost  at  once.  She  had  expected  a  much  harder 
time  of  it,  and  would  scarcely  believe  the  thing 
was  definitely  settled  and  fixed  for  a  week  hence. 

So  the  important  subject  of  Votes  for  Women 
hadn't  by  any  means  a  clear  field  in  her  mind  this 
evening.  It  was  forever  getting  challenged  and 
pushed  aside  and  supplanted  by  a  variety  of  more 
pressing  matters — clothes  and  hats  and  the  re 
arrangement  or  cancellation  of  engagements,  and 
whether  she  had  better  try  to  go  on  from  Aunt 
Alice  to  the  Darnleys',  and  how  far  Aunt  Alice's  good 

[50] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

nature  might  be  expected  to  run  in  the  way  of 
theaters — any  quantity  of  such  things. 

She  did  make  an  honest  effort  to  finish  the  little 
pamphlet,  and  now  and  then  came  to  some  point  that 
really  interested  her,  but,  on  the  whole,  it  was  just 
then  a  hopeless  attempt.  She  dropped  off  to  sleep 
over  it,  and  awoke  an  hour  later,  to  find  the  light 
still  burning  at  her  bedside  and  the  book  of  women's 
rights  open  on  her  knees. 

She  had  had  the  oddest  dream,  all  about  Traill 
and  a  wild  jumble  of  his  ideas  and  sayings,  and, 
toward  the  last,  a  kind  of  panoramic  view  of  that 
social  revolution  he  had  talked  about.  She  saw  it,  in 
her  dream,  as  a  vast  battlefield  across  which  Society- 
As-It-Is  swept  to  its  doom.  She  saw  the  remorseless 
catastrophe  swallow  mankind  and  his  works.  She 
saw  a  new  race  emerge  from  the  ruins  led  by  an 
upright  splendid  figure — and  it  perhaps  need  not 
surprise  us  to  learn  that  the  figure  resembled  Mr. 
Traill. 

He  stood  there  above  the  din  and  dust  looking 
not  unlike  a  taller  Napoleon  Iier,  ...  a  more  hirsute 
Julius  Caesar — perhaps  more  after  the  George 
Washington  tradition. 

August  and  solitary.  Or  perhaps,  on  closer 
examination,  not  quite  solitary.  Was  there  or  was 
there  not  a  second  figure  that  hovered  near  .  .  . 
a  lovely  figure,  young,  beautiful,  and  Greek  in 
body,  but  mature  in  mind  ...  a  fit  companion 
for  that  titanic  leader? 

[51] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

I  must  hasten  to  do  Miss  Standish  the  credit  of 
stating  that  as  she  recalled  this  dream  scene  before 
her  waking  eye  she  laughed;  but  I  cling  to  the  belief 
that  it  was  a  laugh  of  mixed  emotions. 

She  put  out  the  light  by  her  bedside  and  lay  with 
wide  open  eyes.  As  she  had  dreamed  about  her 
new  acquaintance  she  began  to  think  about  him,  and 
especially  in  the  light  of  that  sudden  unexpected 
manifestation  as  a  human  being  with  a  human  in 
terest  in  herself.  Whether  she  liked  it  or  not,  that 
was  profoundly  exciting.  She  made  a  hurried  can 
vass  of  the  man's  personal  characteristics.  Did  he, 
in  short,  qualify  for  this  new  position?  Certainly 
she  couldn't  quite  fit  him  into  the  society  to  which 
she  had  been  accustomed,  but  she  had  a  shrewd  sus 
picion  that  the  society  of  adult  life  was  more  catholic 
than  that  of  a  sub-debutante,  and  that  in  the  draw 
ing-rooms  of  New  York  or  London  one  might  en 
counter  people  who  would  look  very  odd  indeed  at 
the  Small-and-Earlies  of  her  own  experience.  He  was 
sufficiently  pleasing  to  the  eye,  she  considered — in 
deed,  rather  romantic-looking.  He  looked  rather 
like  a  man  with  a  mystery  or  a  "past,"  and  every 
body  knows  that  is  a  very  good  thing  indeed  to  look 
like.  Beyond  all  this  he  had  quite  authentic 
strength  —  force  —  enthusiasm  —  belief  in  himself. 
And,  contrary  to  the  prevailing  misconception,  even 
girls  of  eighteen  often  prefer  these  things  in  men 
to  curly  hair  and  a  Greek  nose. 

Altogether    it    was,    she    considered,    distinctly 

152) 


flattering  to  have  this  sort  of  man  taking  an  interest 
in  you,  while  you  were  still  a  schoolgirl.  A  serious 
man  with  ideas.  It  must  mean  that  you  had  quali 
ties  you  hadn't  suspected  in  yourself. 

She  was  somehow  quite  certain  that  Traill  didn't 
make  a  habit  of  young  girls.  He  hadn't  the  air. 
Besides,  he  had  dealt  with  her  entirely  on  the  intel 
lectual  side  until  that  last  disturbing  moment. 

The  intellectual  side.  She  reflected  upon  the  young 
men  of  her  acquaintance — undergraduates  for  the 
most  part — and  tried  to  imagine  what  their  intel 
lectual  sides  were  like.  She  knew  quite  well  they 
hadn't  any,  and  they  seemed  to  her  all  at  once  like 
little  foolish  boys  playing  about  in  pinafores.  She 
wondered  how  she  had  endured  them. 

What  would  they  have  to  say  about  the  exploita 
tion  of  labor,  or  the  unfair  division  of  wealth,  or  the 
"greve  generale"?  Did  they  know  that  this  world 
is  rapidly  approaching  a  social  revolution?  They 
did  not.  They  played  football  under  the  shadow 
of  the  coming  storm,  or  rowed,  or  ran  hundred-yard 
dashes.  They  danced — just  like  what's-their-names 
on  the  eve  of  the  battle  of  Wellington. 

Thought  has  a  half  dreamlike  disconnectedness 
when  you  are  lying  awake  in  the  dark.  It  comes  in 
dots  and  dashes.  Hope's  mind  leaped  from  the 
lamentable  frivolity  of  her  undergraduate  friends  to 
the  serious  matter  of  personal  decoration — frocks, 
to  wit — and  from  that,  inexplicably,  to  a  moment 
of  unendurable  perturbation  on  the  bridge  over 

[53] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Lake  Whitney  when  Traill  had  slanged  holy  wedlock 
in  terms  hideously  embarrassing  (though  one  couldn't 
make  out  just  why),  but  so  indignant  and  scathing 
that  one  felt  sure  he  must  be  right. 

She  had  often  dispassionately  reflected  upon  the 
exterior  of  marriage.  It  was  a  part  of  your  life — and 
a  big  part,  too.  It  began  a  few  years  after  school 
was  over  and  ran  on  far  into  a  misty  post-historical 
period  called  old  age.  It  meant  having  a  home  of 
your  own  (which  should  be  exceedingly  different 
from  the  one  you  were  brought  up  in),  and  enter 
taining  a  good  deal — wearing  frocks  as  low  as  you 
chose  or  Providence  permitted.  It  meant,  no  doubt, 
a  baby  which  would  be  heavenly  and  exciting  (but  for 
some  obscure  reason  one  rather  blinked  its  arrival), 
and  last  it  meant  a  husband — a  tall,  shadowy  member 
of  the  household,  not  yet  clear  of  feature  or  coloring, 
who  was  very  kindly,  not  to  say  gallant,  and  called 
you  "my  dear,"  and  was  out  a  good  deal. 

This  looks  a  somewhat  cynical  picture,  and  dis 
concertingly  like  the  real  thing  as  observed  in  some 
homes,  but  Hope  didn't  mean  it  for  cynicism  at  all. 
That  conspicuous  omission  of  Love  as  an  inmate  of 
the  family  was  purely  naive. 

She  had  not  seldom  considered  the  matter  of 
love,  read  of  it  pretty  constantly,  and  once  or  twice 
had  imagined  herself  smitten.  If  a  friend  had  dis 
cussed  a  loveless  marriage  with  her,  she  would  have 
been  critical  and  doubtless  indignant.  Still,  her 
instinct  had  never  placed  romantic  love  in  that 

[54] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

practical  work-a-day  picture  of  married  life.  It 
would  have  been  a  little  uncomfortable  there — a 
little  unsettling. 

It  would  have  had  to  come  face  to  face  with 
situations  of  intolerable  embarrassment. 

Now,  in  the  new  light  of  Traill's  ideas,  the  whole 
traditional  scheme  was  wrong  and  had  got  to  be 
rearranged — an  uncomfortable  business  at  best.  It 
somehow  seemed  to  demand  scrutiny  and  considera 
tion  of  things  one  had  been  accustomed  to  avoiding. 

She  avoided  it  now — since,  after  all,  it  was  not 
so  very  pressing,  and,  besides,  she  meant  to  see  Mr. 
Traill  in  New  York — often — and  hear  more  about 
a  great  many  of  these  fascinating  things.  Heaps 
more  about  Freedom. 

She  pronounced  that  battered  word  with  a  great 
deal  of  firmness,  had  a  dim  picture  of  Traill's  thin, 
keen  face,  and  so  fell  asleep  upon  the  most  eventful 
day  of  her  life. 


CHAPTER  IV 

I  RECORD,  with  not  a  little  interest,  that  when 
this  young  girl  awoke  the  next  morning  with  the 
warm  sunshine  slanting  in  along  the  floor  and  the 
curtains  stirring  gently  and  the  room  full  of  the 
scent  of  lilac  from  the  shrubs  in  front  of  the  house 
—when  she  opened  her  eyes,  and  the  happenings  of 
the  past  day  and  the  reflections  of  the  night  slowly 
returned  to  her  mind,  they  already  seemed  very  dim 
and  far  away  and  rather  frumpish,  and  one  wondered 
how  one  could  have  bothered  about  them.  Shud 
dering  pleasantly  under  her  cold  shower,  she  thought 
of  that  panoramic  dream  and  burst  into  hysterical 
laughter. 

But  later  on  she  discovered  that  certain  forms  of 
enlightenment  are  like  certain  forms  of  disease: 
they  pop  up  in  an  unexpected  and  irritating  fashion 
when  you  are  not  thinking  about  them  at  all.  She 
shopped  that  morning  with  Miss  Cornelia  Hitchcock, 
and  they  visited  among  other  places  one  of  the 
large  department  stores  in  Chapel  Street. 

It  occurred  to  Hope  that  the  young  woman  who 
dragged  a  great  many  bolts  of  silk  down  from  off 
overhead  shelves  to  spread  out  for  their  inspection 

[56] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

looked  white  and  tired,  though  the  day  was  not  yet 
half  done.  Acting  upon  a  sudden  impulse  that 
rather  frightened  her,  once  she  was  under  way,  she 
said: 

"Please  don't  think  I'm  rude.  I  really  want  to 
know.  Would  you  tell  me  what  wages  you  and  the 
others  who  do  your  kind  of  work  get?  I'm — I'm 
interested  in  it." 

The  young  woman  looked  at  her  apathetically. 

"Five  dollars." 

"Can  you  live  on  that?"  Hope  asked,  and  the 
young  woman  shrugged  her  shoulders,  which  were 
too  thin. 

"Well,  you  can  see  I'm  alive — after  a  fashion. 
And  it's  better  than  a  factory,  anyhow." 

Another  customer  claimed  her  just  then,  and  Miss 
Cornelia  Hitchcock  hurried  her  friend  out  into  the 
street. 

"My  dear!" — she  was  quite  pink  with  embarrass 
ment  and  protest — "  what  in  the  world  made  you  do 
that?  I  nearly  died!  Asking  a  shop  girl  what  her 
wages  are!  How  could  you?" 

"I  wanted  to  know,"  Hope  exclaimed.  "You 
see,  five  dollars  isn't  enough." 

Miss  Hitchcock  turned  upon  her  with  a  sudden 
thought. 

"It's  all  that  Dark-and-Stormy-Evening  young 
man!"  she  said.  "It's  the  Nihilist  man  with  the 
bombs,  and  you  needn't  try  to  deny  it.  I  do  think 
you  might  let  people  like  that  alone!  They're  low. 

[57] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Your  mother  would  have  a  fit,  I'm  quite  sure,  if  she 
knew  about  it.  Good  heavens!  the  creature  might 
be  arrested  at  any  moment — while  you're  walking 
with  him.  Those  people  are  always  getting  caught 
for  the  murders  and  things  they've  done.  Do 
promise  to  be  careful!" 

"Do  promise  not  to  be  an  idiot!"   said  Hope, 
tranquilly.     And   when  she  went  home  she  asked 
Miss   King: 
/^Can  a  shop  girl  live  on  five  dollars  a  week?" 

Her  godmother  nodded  at  her  as  if  in  a  kind  of 
surprised  approbation. 

'lit  depends.  Here  in  New  Haven  she  can,  I  dare 
say — especially  if  she  lives  with  her  family  and  is 
one  of  several  wage-earners.  In  big  cities  the  thing 's 
much  more  serious.  Even  if  you  could  exist  on  it, 
and  you  just  about  can,  at  a  pinch,  it  is  existence,  not 
life.  You  see  it  doesn't  leave  any  margin  for  possible 
illness  or  for  rest  or  for  amusement.  The  world's 
very  slow  to  realize  that  everybody,  and  especially 
everybody  who  works,  who  produces,  has  a  right 
to  more  than  the  mere  possession  of  life;  he  has  a 
right  to  the  enjoyment  of  it.'^ 

"Thank  you!"  Hope  said.  "Things  are  pretty 
wrong,  aren't  they?"  She  wanted  to  talk  more 
about  it — ask  more  questions — but  she  couldn't  quite 
bear  to.  Perhaps  she  had  had  too  much  on  the 
previous  day.  She  felt  that  she  couldn't  just  then 
endure  the  thought  of  any  more  injustice  and 
suffering  and  hopelessness. 

[68] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

They  stared  at  her  so,  across  a  kind  of  gulf! 

There  existed  in  New  Haven  as  elsewhere  a  theory 
that  the  young  maidens  of  good  family  should  have 
no  formal  social  intercourse  with  the  opposite  sex 
until  they  were  out  in  society.  In  actual  practice, 
however,  there  were,  as  in  most  other  towns,  not  a 
few  boy-and-girl  parties  of  various  kinds — skating- 
parties,  informal  dinner  parties,  small  and  early 
dances.  In  most  centers  these  mild  gaieties  cluster 
about  the  midwinter  holidays  because  the  boys  and 
very  young  men  are  then  back  from  school  or  college, 
but,  New  Haven  being  a  university  town,  the  sterner 
sex  abounds  through  nine  months  of  the  year. 

Shortly  before  her  departure  for  New  York  Hope 
went  to  a  little  dinner  party  at  the  home  of  her 
friend  Miss  Charity  Dix.  The  festivity  has  already 
been  foreshadowed  in  an  indirect  way,  for  it  was  here 
that  the  three  undergraduates,  cruelly  trodden  upon 
in  the  street,  as  to  their  feelings,  endeavored  to 
revenge  themselves  upon  Miss  Standish  by  a  marked 
coldness  of  manner,  which  completely  missed  fire, 
as  Hope  never  saw  it  at  all. 

She  was  seated  next  to  a  ridiculously  handsome 
young  gentleman  who  played  heroines  in  the  uni 
versity  dramatic  association's  dramas,  but  wasn't, 
happily,  at  all  ladylike,  and  had  cultivated  a  gruff 
manner,  and  made  rather  witty  little  jokes  of  a  not 
too  abstruse  or  complicated  character.  This  gentle 
man,  whose  name  was  Bayes,  and  his  age  almost  one- 
and-twenty,  was  far-famed  as  a  destroyer  of  maidenly 

5  [59] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

peace  of  mind,  and  Hope  was  half  bored,  half  divert 
ed  to  observe  that  he  was  engaged  hi  a  determined 
effort  to  add  her  valuable  scalp  to  his  already 
large  collection. 

That  wasn't  her  idea  just  then  of  a  pleasant  even 
ing,  for  she  had  come  away  from  home  in  a  rather 
serious  frame  of  mind  after  a  long  talk  with  Miss 
King  on  The  Cause.  With  a  vague  thought  of  escape 
she  turned  to  the  youth  at  her  right,  but  this  gentle 
man  was  absorbed  in  Miss  Cornelia  Hitchcock,  and, 
if  Hope  had  but  known,  meant  so  to  remain,  for 
he  was  one  of  the  enraged  three.  So  she  said  a  little 
wearily  to  herself,  "Oh,  all  right!"  and  once  more 
faced  about  toward  the  waiting  Mr.  Bayes,  into  whose 
eyes,  during  the  next  hour,  she  gazed  so  earnestly  that 
Mr.  Bayes's  head  went  round  and  round,  and  the  ex 
cellent  food  placed  before  him  was  untasted,  unob 
served,  even  a  vanilla  mousse  with  hot  chocolate 
poured  over  it,  which  was  his  favorite  form  of  nour 
ishment. 

Indeed,  to  such  a  state  had  the  enamoured  young 
man  been  reduced  that  he  found  himself  unable  to 
bear  the  after-dinner  entertainment  furnished  by 
two  of  the  guests  who  had  almost  "made"  the 
university  glee  club,  and  who  settled  themselves 
firmly  at  the  piano  to  sing  comic  songs.  Mr.  Bayes 
remarked  to  Miss  Standish  that  seldom  had  fiercer 
sounds  assailed  his  ear,  and  let's  get  out  of  this! 

So  they  went  and  sat  on  the  stairs.  Mr.  Bayes 
asserted  that  this  was  the  most  important  evening 

[60] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

of  his  life,  and  wanted  to  explain  why,  but  Hope 
wasn't  quite  ready  for  that.  She  headed  him  off,  and 
with  some  difficulty  got  him  started  upon  topics 
unrelated  to  the  softer  emotions. 

He  wasn't  a  success.  In  the  first  place,  he  knew 
nothing  and  cared  for  nothing  beyond  what  might 
be  called  the  extra-curriculum  activities  of  Yale 
University,  and  even  upon  that  limited  field  he 
seemed  to  be  rather  at  a  loss.  He  had  no  views, 
only  personal  gossip.  Hope  regarded  him  with  a 
kind  of  dismay,  for  she  chose,  a  little  unfairly,  to 
account  him  a  type  of  young  manhood  in  general — 
an  exemplar  of  his  sex  and  age.  This  was  masculine 
society  as  she  had  known,  endured,  and  temperately 
enjoyed  it. 

Was  it  possible  that  two  or  three  talks  with  a 
type  of  another  species  had  permanently  spoiled  her 
for  normal  human  intercourse?  She  was  genuinely 
alarmed,  for  she  had  come  in  contact  with  few  older 
men,  and  she  didn't  know  that  a  very,  very  raw  boy 
of  twenty  may  quite  possibly,  within  the  next  five 
years,  turn  into  the  most  presentable  of  young  men. 

Mr.  Bayes's  evil  genius  moved  him  to  comment 
upon  the  talk  addressed  that  morning  to  his  division 
by  a  visiting  sociological  gentleman — described  as  a 
long-haired  freak  with  a  pink  tie  and  bombs  in  his 
coat-tail  pocket. 

Hope  sat  up  suddenly  and  demanded  the  lecturer's 
name.  It  might  be  Traill.  It  wasn't,  though.  It 
was  a  German  name  that  she  had  never  before  heard. 

[61] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

She  pressed  Mr.  Bayes  for  his  ideas  upon  sociological 
subjects,  and  watched  with  a  cruel  smile  while  he 
floundered.  Social  science  he  summed  up,  after  a 
heated  five  minutes,  as  diseased  piffle.  He  knew 
it,  because  his  father  had  told  him  so,  and  his  father, 
being  proprietor  of  several  mills  and  factories,  ought 
to  know  what  he  was  talking  about. 

Hope  sighed  and  shook  her  head. 

"Oh,  very  well,  then,"  she  said,  inwardly,  "flirt! 
if  you  can't  do  anything  else."  She  allowed  a  brief 
silence  to  fall  between  them,  and  regarded  her 
companion  with  a  faint  inviting  smile. 

Young  Mr.  Bayes's  eyes  kindled. 

It  is  not  easy  to  convey  this  gentleman's  fascina 
tion  by  strict  reportorial  methods.  You  must  bear  in 
mind  extraordinary  good  looks  and  a  tradition  of 
wide  success  in  their  employment.  To  be  sure,  he 
was  dull  outside  his  specialty,  but  many  specialists 
are.  Within  the  limits  of  his  chosen  field  we  must 
take  him  to  have  been  reasonably  expert.  Hope 
heard  at  last  why  it  was  that  this  evening  was  the 
most  important  in  Mr.  Bayes's  life,  and  listened  to  a 
great  many  gratifying  truths  about  her  own  personal 
appearance  and  spiritual  qualities. 

She  became  rather  breathlessly  aware  after  half 
an  hour  of  tempestuous  wooing  that  unless  she 
took  immediate  precautions  she  was  going  to  be 
kissed  by  a  man  (slightly  to  promote  Mr.  Bayes  in 
the  human  scale)  for  the  first  time  in  her  life.  And 
that  is  a  matter  of  no  small  importance. 

[62] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Her  first  impulse  was  the  instinctive  one  of  self- 
defense — that  fierce  modesty  which  is  ever  on 
guard  against  outrage.  There  supervened  a  brief 
thoughtless  interval  of  the  sensation  which  birds 
and  rodents  are  traditionally  conceived  to  feel  before 
an  attacking  serpent.  Then,  entirely  mistress  of 
herself,  she  reflected  that  here  was  an  experience 
about  which  she  had  often  felt  the  most  profound 
curiosity,  and  she  knew  that  she  immensely  wanted 
to  make  it,  here  and  now,  her  own.  She  was  quite 
aware  that  it  wasn't  at  all  "nice"  to  let  people  kiss 
you,  and  it  is  very  probable  that  a  fortnight  before 
she  wouldn't  for  an  instant  have  considered  it.  But 
within  that  fortnight  odd  and  revolutionary  things 
had  been  stirring  within  her,  and  in  the  process  it 
seemed  a  good  many  fixtures  had  somehow  got  dis 
lodged  or  overturned. 

She  hung  undecided  for  an  instant,  then  quite 
brazenly  and  shamelessly,  though  with  downcast 
eyes,  waited.  And  in  a  moment  more  young  Mr. 
Bayes,  moving  with  some  nervousness  and  agitation 
— for  he  was  one  of  your  true  adventurers  in  matters 
of  the  heart,  and  quite  touchingly  believed  in  his  own 
emotions,  every  time — Mr.  Bayes  had  pressed  very 
close  to  her  and  caught  her  hands  in  his.  He  looked 
very  gallant  and  handsome  and  romantic  in  the  dim 
light  there  on  the  stairs,  and  rather  terrifying,  but 
not  unpleasantly  so.  He  bent  his  head  to  hers, 
babbling  fond  and  awkward  and  negligible  words. 
Hope  didn't  stir,  save  for  a  quickened  breathing, 

[63] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

and  Mr.  Bayes  kissed  her  twice,  square  on  the 
mouth.  Hope  uttered  a  faint  smothered  "Oh!" 

It  was  very  exciting  indeed — quite  up  to  one's 
expectations,  if  not  beyond.  She  felt  a  little  shaky 
and  hysterical — it  must  have  been  hysteria,  for  she 
wanted  to  laugh — and  like  getting  away  from  this 
overcharged  air  back  to  the  more  breathable  atmos 
phere  of  the  drawing-room,  whence  came  the  sound 
of  the  piano  and  of  ill-harmonized  voices. 

She  said: 

"We  must  go  back!"  Bayes  tried  to  maintain 
his  hold  on  her  hands,  but  she  pulled  them  away  and 
got  to  her  feet.  He  began  to  protest  quite  piteously. 
He  had  so  much  to  say  to  her.  He  hadn't  begun. 
This  was  brutality.  Did  she  want  to  break  his 
heart?  Hope  gave  him  a  kindly,  rather  absent 
smile.  She  was  more  and  more  sure  that  she  wanted 
to  get  back  to  that  comfortable  lighted  drawing- 
room  where  the  others  were,  and  she  said  so.  She 
touched  her  hair,  laid  the  back  of  one  hand  for  an 
instant  against  her  lips,  and  turned  away  down  the 
stairs. 

Young  Mr.  Bayes,  puzzled  and  hurt,  followed 
sulkily  after  her. 

The  oddest  part  of  this  reprehensible  performance, 
it  seems  to  me,  was  its  purely  experimental  character. 
She  hadn't  the  slightest  interest  in  young  Mr.  Bayes 
as  a  person.  She  thought  him  rather  a  fool.  And 
yet  he  had  made  love  very  nicely,  and  he  was  almost 
the  handsomest  youth  she  had  ever  seen.  Girls 

[64] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

usually,  though  not  always,  place  a  good  deal  of 
value  on  that.  She  thought  of  him,  as  she  made 
ready  for  bed  that  night,  with  some  reminiscent 
tenderness.  She  supposed  he  was  rather  a  dear,  even 
though  a  fool.  Certainly  she  didn't  want  to  be 
bothered  with  him  in  future.  He  had  served  his 
purpose;  let  him  go!  She  sat  on  the  edge  of  her  bed 
reflecting  upon  this  adventurous  evening,  and  there 
came  unbidden  before  her  mind's  eye  a  figure  gone, 
these  three  years  since,  from  her  ken — the  oarsman 
and  pewter-collector  spoken  of  by  Miss  Ethel  Goffe. 
It  was  not  altogether  unnatural  that  the  wraith  of 
Mr.  Roger  Bacon  should  rise  before  her  just  now 
when  her  mind  was  dwelling  upon  the  tender  emo 
tions.  He  had,  in  his  day,  incorporated  to  her 
fifteen-year-old  imagination  all  the  magnificences  of 
man  and  hero  and  Greek  god.  He  had  been  romance 
to  her;  an  eye-filling,  heart-stirring  presence;  Hector 
cum  Achilles  cum  Lancelot  cum  Percival  cum  Richard 
Lion -heart  cum  Bayard  cum  Rudolf  Rassendyl;  a 
being  whose  head  towered  among  the  stars,  but  was 
bent  to  regard  her  with  a  kindly  smile. 

He  had  had  a  family  of  rather  distant  cousins  in 
New  Haven,  friends  of  hers  and  her  mother's.  That 
is  how  a  little  schoolgirl  had  happened  to  meet  a 
gentleman  who  rowed  "number  two"  in  the  'varsity 
boat  for  two  years  and  had  been  Chairman  of  his 
Prom.  Committee,  and  wore  inconspicuously  a  tiny 
gold  device  of  singular  and  forbidding  ghastliness. 
She  remembered  their  first  meeting  at  luncheon  at 

[65] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

the  house  of  those  cousins,  and  how  her  eyes  had 
devoured  him  across  the  table,  and  how  he  had  talked 
to  her  afterward  in  the  library  quite  gravely  and 
naturally — just  as  if  she  had  been  a  grown-up.  She 
remembered  a  visit  to  his  rooms  on  the  campus 
to  inspect  the  collection  of  pewter,  again  with  the 
distant  cousins  and  without  parental  knowledge 
or  permission  (which  most  certainly  would  have  been 
withheld).  She  remembered  how  she  had  met 
him  one  day  out  by  the  golf  club  at  Lake  Whitney, 
and  how  he  had  walked  in  with  her  all  the  way  to 
her  house.  She  remembered  certain  late  winter  and 
spring  days  when  she  had  encountered  him  running 
through  the  streets,  in  a  sweater  and  shorts,  well  up 
to  the  fore  of  a  squad  of  silent,  grim  young  gentlemen 
as  scandalously  ill-clad  as  himself — but  on  these 
occasions  no  look  or  word  of  recognition,  not  even 
an  Olympian  nod,  only  fixed  fierce  eyes  and  a 
squared  jaw  as  the  little  cohort  swept  past. 

She  tried  now  to  look  back  quite  dispassionately, 
across  the  yawning  chasm  of  three  years,  upon  Mr. 
Roger  Bacon.  She  tried  to  force  herself  to  realize 
that  he  must  have  been  a  very  ordinary  young  man, 
much  like  the  undergraduates  of  her  little  dinner 
party  this  evening,  and  nothing  like  as  spectacularly 
beautiful  as  the  amorous  Mr.  Bayes.  But  that 
wouldn't  dc — not  for  an  instant.  It  was  hopelessly 
impossible  to  look  with  dispassionate  eyes  upon  her 
premiers  amours,  but  even  so  she  knew  that  the 
God  of  her  childhood  had  not  been  such  as  these 

[66] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

self-conscious  and  explosive  young  gentlemen  who 
laughed  too  loudly  and  called  each  other  strange 
and  improbable  names.  He  could  never  have  been 
like  that — never  at  any  stage  of  his  career. 

She  wondered  where  he  was  now — what  had  be 
come  of  him. 

The  grave  and  kindly  smile,  and  the  slightly 
quizzical  eyes  that  her  memory  always  endowed  him 
with,  seemed  to  her  all  at  once  very  real  and  near, 
almost  physically  visible — as  if  the  man  might  be  in 
the  room  where  she  was — as  if  he  might  have  been 
looking  on  from  the  foot  of  the  stairs  in  Charity 
Dix's  house.  And  quite  suddenly  she  was  ashamed. 
She  burned  and  ached  with  shame  from  head  to  foot. 
She  covered  her  hot  face  against  that  smiling,  kindly 
scrutiny  and  gave  a  quick  sob,  and  before  she  knew 
it  tears  were  streaming  down  her  face  under  her 
hands  and  wetting  her  bosom. 

But  in  the  morning  she  laughed  with  an  edge  of 
scorn,  and  said  to  herself  with  some  emphasis  that 
she  was  glad  the  Bayes  episode  had  taken  place.  It 
was  both  interesting  and  educational. 

Still,  when  a  long  letter  (the  fruit  of  wakeful 
midnight  hours?)  arrived  somewhat  later  on  and 
she  had  looked  at  the  subscription,  she  tore  it  up 
unread  and  burnt  the  pieces  in  her  fireplace. 

There  seems  to  me  to  be  something  dimly  symbolic 
about  that  act.  In  any  case  it  may  serve  to  mark  the 
end  of  the  first  or  preliminary  stage  in  the  journey 
of  this  average  American  girl. 


CHAPTER  V 

MISS  KING  lived  in  a  narrow  house  in  East 
Fortieth  Street,  quite  alone,  for  she  had  no 
family;  but  a  young  woman  secretary  seemed  almost 
a  regular  member  of  the  household,  for  Hope  often 
heard  from  behind  the  closed  door  of  a  certain  second- 
story  front  room  the  rat-tat  of  her  typewriter  at 
an  incredible  hour  of  the  morning  or  of  the  night,  and 
she  frequently  lunched  with  the  two  ladies,  but 
never  dined. 

Miss  King  had  been  born  very  much  within  the 
Sacred  Pale  in  New  York,  and,  in  a  careless  hap 
hazard  way,  had  kept  up  her  early  acquaintances, 
and  even  made  new  ones  among  people  who  had  been 
born  the  Lord  knows  where — certainly  many  miles 
away  from  the  Sacred  Pale.  She  went  out  little, 
and  then  only  to  dinner,  never  to  late  evening 
parties,  though  she  allowed  herself  an  occasional 
play,  and  was  rather  often  to  be  seen  in  somebody's 
opera  box,  where  she  was  visited  in  the  entr'acts  by 
elderly  gentlemen  who  chaffed  her  heavily  about 
what  they  called  her  "hobby" — meaning  a  life 
time's  serious  and  valuable  devotion  to  the  cause 
of  Woman  Suffrage.  But  a  surprising  number  of 

[68] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

people  with  quite  surprisingly  august  names  came 
to  dine  in  the  Fortieth  Street  house,  and  they  got 
very  good  dinners  too,  which  might  incline  one  to 
wonder  a  little,  as  Miss  King  was  notoriously  vague 
about  domestic  matters ;  but  she  had  a  butler  known 
by  the  quaint  name  of  Ribbs,  who,  if  he  had  been  a 
slave,  would  have  fetched  an  enormous  sum  at 
auction;  but  he  wasn't  a  slave,  he  was  a  general  and 
an  artist,  and  a  faithful  retainer  of  many  years' 
standing,  and  ruled  his  miniature  army  below  stairs 
with  a  drawn  sword.  So,  doubtless,  the  excellent 
food  and  drink  may  be  accounted  for  without  look 
ing  further. 

As  it  was  late  in  the  month  of  May,  there  wasn't 
very  much  that  her  godmother  could  do  for  Hope 
in  the  way  of  social  entertainment,  but  Hope,  though 
she  would  have  liked  her  visit  to  take  place  during 
the  gay  season,  didn't  very  much  care.  It  was  fun 
enough  just  to  be  away  from  home  and  humdrum 
things — to  have  New  York  spread  out  before  her 
with  its  crowds  and  its  shops  and  its  theaters. 

Her  cousins  the  Darnleys  were  still  in  town,  wait 
ing  for  their  boy  to  come  down  from  Groton,  when 
they  meant  to  go  abroad,  and  she  often  lunched  or 
dined  at  their  house,  which  was  in  Fifth  Avenue 
among  the  Seventies.  She  had  always  admired 
Caroline  Darnley,  and  thought  her  very  clever  and 
wise  (which  in  a  shrewd,  worldly  fashion  the  lady 
undoubtedly  was).  At  one  period  she  had  said  to 
herself  that  she  would  be  as  much  like  Mrs.  Darnley 

[69] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

as  she  possibly  could,  when  she  arrived  at  that 
advanced  age;  that  she  would  know  a  good  deal,  but 
seldom  show  it;  that  she  would  regard  the  world  with 
a  mild  and  quizzical  cynicism;  that  she  would  be 
very  smart,  but  poke  fun  at  people  who  seemed  to 
value  smartness.  It  seemed  to  her  distinctly  the 
line  to  take  at  thirty-five.  But  more  latterly  she 
had  begun  to  doubt  that  this  was,  after  all,  her  line. 
Perhaps  something  rarer — bluey-green  draperies  and 
half  lights,  a  sweet  and  slightly  mysterious  gravity  of 
demeanor — the  tired-princess  kind  of  thing. 

After  all,  anybody  could  be  witty  and  cynical, 
but  it  wanted  special  qualities  of  body  and  spirit  to 
be  alluring.  And  if  one  felt  that  one  had  them — 

However,  all  this  was  for  the  rather  distant  future, 
and,  meanwhile,  it  was  great  fun  to  lunch  with 
Caroline  Darnley  or  drive  with  her  in  the  Park, 
and  listen  to  her  rather  inconsequent  flow  of  soul. 
It  was  great  fun  to  be  liked,  too,  and  to  have  a  woman 
as  experienced  and  sophisticated  as  this  think  you 
pretty. 

Mrs.  Darnley  was  quite  outspoken  about  Hope's 
extraordinary  beauty.  She  hadn't  much  herself: 
she  made  a  very  good  effect,  but  it  was  the  result  of 
much  thought  and  care  and  expense.  In  dowdy 
clothes,  she  would  have  been  nowhere  at  all,  and  she 
knew  it  quite  well.  Hope,  on  the  other  hand,  would 
have  been  beautiful  in  a  calico  dress  and  a  gingham 
apron,  and  her  cousin  told  her  so. 

"You  ought  to  be  a  very  great  success  when  you 

[70] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

come  out,  with  your  looks,  and  your  feeling  for 
clothes,  and  your — your  'go.'  That  is,  if  you  don't 
do  anything  stupid  to  spoil  it,  like  falling  in  love 
too  soon,  or  getting  freakish  ideas,  as  so  many  girls 
do  nowadays.  You  haven't  any  ideas?"  she  de 
manded,  anxiously. 

Hope  said  she  couldn't  think  of  any  at  the 
moment,  and  Mrs.  Darnley  sighed  with  relief. 

"They  frighten  the  men  so!  I  suppose  you'll 
come  out  in  New  Haven  next  autumn.  Yes?  Of 
course,  I  could  bring  you  out  here,  and  I  should  be 
glad  to,  but,  on  the  whole,  I  don't  advise  it.  You'd 
have  a  perfectly  miserable  time.  Oh,  not  among  the 
men!  You'd  be  all  right  there.  It's  the  girls  I'm 
thinking  of.  They  don't  like  outside  competition 
(small  blame  to  them!),  and  the  more  successful  you 
were  the  more  they'd  make  it  unpleasant  for  you. 
You  see,  they're  dear  sweet  souls,  most  of  them, 
by  nature,  but  it's  a  sort  of  running  fight  from  the 
beginning — and  the  devil  take  the  hindmost.  It 
hardens  them.  Of  course,  it's  all  wrong.  Young 
girls  oughtn't  to  have  to  fight  for  their  existence 
like  that,  but  fight  they  do,  and  a  stranger  hasn't 
much  chance  among  them.  You'd  much  better 
get  that  stage  over  in  New  Haven  during  the  autumn, 
then  come  to  me  for  a  month  or  two  in  January,  and 
go  to  the  grown-up  parties.  I'll  see  that  you  have 
a  good  enough  time." 

This  seemed  to  Hope  a  prospect  fraught  with  well- 
nigh  incredible  joys.  She  was  enchanted  by  it,  and 

[71] 


THE    OPENING   DOOR 

accepted  her  cousin's  offer  on  the  spot,  leaving 
the  dubious  maternal  concurrence  as  a  bridge  to 
be  crossed  when  it  was  come  to. 

She  had  already  been  brought  into  contact  with 
three  or  four  of  the  prospective  debutantes  of  the 
coming  season,  belated  for  one  reason  or  another  in 
their  flight  to  the  country  or  to  foreign  shores,  and, 
while  these  excellent  maidens  were  very  hospitable 
and  kind,  she  had  seemed  more  than  once  to  feel 
their  eyes  upon  her  in  a  kind  of  furtive  appraisal, 
and  had  wondered  if  there  mightn't  be  a  shade  of 
reserve  in  their  polite  inquiries  as  to  her  plans  for  the 
future.  She  decided  that  she  was  very  glad  indeed 
not  to  have  to  look  forward  to  doing  battle  with  them 
on  their  own  field. 

The  atmosphere  of  the  house  in  East  Fortieth 
Street  both  bored  and  interested  her.  At  first  she 
thought  it  extremely  dull,  for  that  efflorescence  of 
mental  activity  (if  it  deserves  such  an  important 
name)  which  had  so  suddenly  opened  fresh  worlds  to 
her  in  New  Haven  had  been  a  forced,  unnatural  hot 
house  growth,  and,  among  the  delights  of  the  city, 
had  withered  almost  to  nothing,  though  it  seems  not 
to  have  died  altogether.  The  household  was  quite 
the  oddest  she  had  ever  known — a  combination  of 
house  and  business  office  that  ran,  in  both  capacities, 
with  a  silent  efficiency  surprising  to  contemplate. 

Throughout  the  morning  Miss  King  remained  shut 
up  with  her  secretary  in  the  second-floor  front  room, 
and  there  was  a  constant  coming  and  going  of 

[72] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

women,  both  young  and  old,  and  of  men  as  well, 
though  the  men  were  few.  Hope  often  met  these 
visitors  on  the  stairs  or  in  the  lower  hall,  and  most 
of  them  seemed  to  her  a  type  she  didn't  know.  They 
came  and  went  with  such  a  quiet,  purposeful  haste, 
and  they  so  seldom  even  turned  their  eyes  toward 
her.  There  were  some,  to  be  sure,  who  arrived  in 
carriages  or  motors  and  had  a  bearing  more  familiar 
to  her  experience,  but  in  even  these  ladies  there  was, 
or  so  she  thought,  something  bafflingly  strange. 

After  a  time  she  decided  that  it  was  just  purpose — 
and  the  somewhat  aloof  unself-consciousness  that 
purpose  brings. 

Often  two  or  three  of  them  remained  to  luncheon, 
sometimes  more  than  that;  sometimes  there  were 
eight  or  ten  at  table,  both  women  and  men,  and 
very  often,  indeed,  half  of  the  guests  would  be 
representatives  of  Miss  King's  organization  from 
Western  or  Southern  states.  Early  in  her  visit  her 
godmother  warned  her  that  these  luncheon  parties 
were  very  likely  to  be  something  between  board 
meetings  and  debating  clubs,  and  that  she  must 
come  or  stay  away  just  as  her  whim  dictated.  She 
did  absent  herself,  half  out  of  timidity,  for  the  first 
few  days,  but  once  she  had  sat  through  a  luncheon 
she  came  again  and  listened. 

At  any  rate,  they  took  their  cause  seriously. 
There  couldn't  be  any  doubt  of  that.  And,  good  or 
bad,  the  thing  appeared  to  be  widespread.  These 
pleasant,  quiet,  affable  ladies  talked  of  Washington 

[73] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

and  Wyoming,  of  Colorado,  of  the  Industrial  New 
England  States,  exactly  as  if  they  were  Cabinet 
members  discussing  a  political  campaign. 

She  was  rather  amazed  to  hear  that  complete 
Woman  Suffrage  was  in  actual  operation  in  four 
states.  She  had  thought  it  a  mere  idea — the  dream 
of  a  few  enthusiasts — a  thing  for  some  dim  remote 
millennium,  and  here  it  was  already  an  established 
working  fact.  She  got  a  faint  and  momentary  thrill 
out  of  that — to  think  that  women  could  be  so  clever. 
And  she  was  conscious  of  a  sort  of  vicarious  pride 
in  Aunt  Alice  King's  being  a  leader  among  them. 

But  all  this  took  no  real  hold  upon  her  imagination, 
partly  because  there  were  so  many  other  pleasanter 
things  to  think  about,  and  partly  because  most  of  the 
talk  was  over  her  head.  She  didn't  know  enough 
about  the  elements  of  the  subject  to  follow  its 
political  intricacies.  Yet  out  of  the  cloud  of  in 
comprehensible  talk  there  flashed  incessantly  to 
her  a  word  familiar  of  connotation,  once  potent 
and  exciting — the  word  Freedom.  vAll  this  had  to  do 
with  Freedom.  Women  must  be  free."  She  could 
comprehend  that,  at  least,  and  was  so  pleased  with 
herself  that  once  or  twice  she  was  on  the  point  of 
saying  that  she  too  knew  what  Freedom  was.  It 
might  give  her  some  standing  with  these  alert, 
intelligent  people  who  talked  round  her  and  over 
her,  and,  after  a  few  ineffectual  monosyllabically 
answered  efforts  to  put  her  at  her  ease,  behaved  just 
as  if  she  wasn't  there  at  all.  But  she  was  a  little 

[74] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

afraid  to  make  the  leap.  The  first  sentence  wanted 
some  framing  and  offered  difficulties.  A  score  of 
times  she  waited  for  an  opening  that  never  came, 
and  in  the  end  gave  it  up. 

It  didn't  really  matter,  anyhow. 

She  spoke  once  of  these  matters  to  Mrs.  Darnley, 
who  was  annoyed  and  said  that  Miss  King  ought 
to  know  better  than  expose  a  young  girl  to  such  per 
formances. 

"The  idea!  A  mere  child!  I'm  sure  your  mother 
would  be  frightfully  annoyed.  Oh,  I  suppose  it's 
all  right  for  Alice  King  to  mix  with  a  lot  of 
frumps  and  talk  politics.  She  has  nothing  else 
to  do.  But  a  girl!  I've  half  a  mind  to  speak  to 
her." 

Several  of  the  frumps  happened  to  be  what  the 
Sunday  newspapers  would  call  Leaders  of  New  York 
Society,  and  incidentally  friends  of  Mrs.  Darnley. 
Hope  reminded  her  cousin  of  this  fact,  and  Mrs. 
Darnley  said: 

"Yes,  I  know.  The  thing  has  become  fashion 
able — like  Indian  mahatmas  or  a  new  tenor.  Milli- 
cent  Harmar  and  Ethel  Conway  and  Mrs.  Spode — 
all  that  lot.  It  makes  me  quite  ill.  Of  course, 
they'll  drop  it  presently.  It's  just  a  temporary 
pastime,  but  it  makes  them  ridiculous  enough  while 
it  lasts.  .  .  .  Oh,  well!  I  suppose  there's  no  great 
harm  done  so  long  as  you  don't  pick  up  their  absurd 
ideas.  And  you're  not  likely  to  do  that."] 

Here  was  a  chance  for  that  long-delayed  discourse 

6  [75] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

upon  Freedom,  but  Hope  felt  rather  sure  that  her 
cousin  would  prove  an  unsympathetic  audience;  and, 
besides,  the  impulse  was  weak.  So  she  held  her 
tongue,  and  they  went  out  to  drive  in  the  Park. 

Then  one  day  she  met  Traill. 

It  was  at  Miss  Alice  King's  table,  of  all  odd  places, 
and  the  encounter  was  quite  unexpected.  She  had 
by  no  means  forgotten  the  man.  He  had  made  too 
real  an  impression  upon  her  for  that.  But  the  joys 
of  New  York  had  crowded  him  back  and  back  in 
her  mind  until  he  had  got  almost  lost  there — a  very 
dim  figure  to  be  taken  out  perhaps  at  some  later 
time  of  leisure  and  reflected  upon.  Nevertheless, 
this  unlooked-for  sight  of  him  gave  her  quite  a 
little  thrill,  and  brought  the  color  flooding  into  her 
cheeks. 

She  had  come  in  late  for  luncheon  and  found 
her  godmother  already  at  table  with  half  a  dozen 
others.  Miss  King  looked  up  at  her  with  a  kind  of 
dismay,  and  down  the  table  toward  Traill,  and  back 
again.  She  said: 

"Oh!  I  thought  you  meant  to  lunch  at  the 
Darnleys'.  I'm  sorry." 

But  she  didn't  explain  what  she  was  sorry  for. 
The  three  men  present  had  got  to  their  feet,  and 
Miss  King  made  the  necessary  introductions. 

There  were  several  vacant  places  at  the  table,  as 
no  one  ever  knew  beforehand  how  many  people  there 
would  be;  but  the  other  guests  had  gathered  close 
on  either  side  of  their  hostess,  so  that  Hope  was 

[76] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

compelled  either  to  sit  next  to  Mr.  Traill,  who  was 
at  the  end  of  one  wing,  or  next  to  a  stout,  fierce  lady 
who  was  at  the  other.  She  sat  down  beside 
Traill,  and  Miss  King,  after  a  perturbed  glance  or 
two,  went  on  with  what  she  had  been  saying  before 
the  interruption. 

The  two  exchanged  polite  banalities. 

Hope  thought  he  made  a  rather  better  appearance 
than  in  New  Haven.  Certainly  his  hair  had  been 
cut,  and  even  his  clothes,  though  still  odd  in  some 
indefinable  fashion,  seemed  rather  more  at  their 
ease  with  him.  But  the  man  himself  had  the  air 
of  one  not  quite  comfortable  in  his  surroundings. 
She  thought  he  perhaps  didn't  like  being  among 
strangers — if  they  were  strangers — and  it  may  be 
she  was  right.  Certainly  he  showed  no  readiness  to 
spread  that  fine  ruthless  sweep  of  wings  that  had  so 
attracted  her  in  New  Haven,  and  she  was  dis 
appointed. 

There  threatened  to  be  one  of  those  awkward 
silences,  and  Hope,  as  much  in  the  idea  of  stirring 
him  up  as  of  being  cheaply  humorous,  asked  him 
how  Freedom  was  coming  on.  Traill  didn't  like 
that,  and  began  a  sharp  retort,  but  just  then  Miss 
King  spoke  to  him  down  the  table,  and  Hope  never 
knew  what  he  had  been  going  to  say,  for  the  con 
versation  remained  for  some  time  general. 

They  were  discussing,  as  well  as  she  could  make 
it  out,  a  bill  for  introduction  in  the  legislature  of 
California,  where  it  appeared  equal  suffrage  was  not 

[77] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

yet  in  force,  but  was  hoped  for  at  no  distant  date. 
Two  or  three  of  the  guests,  including  one  genial  and 
rather  merry  gentleman,  a  professor  of  something 
at  a  California  university,  were  residents  of  that  state, 
and  had  come  three  thousand  miles  for  consultation 
and  counsel.  Hope  had  singularly  little  interest  in 
the  aspiring  women  of  the  Pacific  slope,  and  devoted 
herself  to  the  slow  and  passionate  enjoyment  of  a 
fruit  ice  while  the  sounds  of  battle  rolled  over  her 
head.  Now  and  then,  as  on  previous  like  occasions, 
she  heard  that  significant  word  Freedom  from  some 
body's  lips.  It  rolled  out  of  the  m£lee,  down  the 
table  to  her  like  a  spent  shell,  and  she  nodded  wisely 
over  her  fruit  ice,  for  at  least  she  knew  what  Free 
dom  was.  She  meant  to  get  Traill  on  the  subject 
again  when  they  were  alone. 

But  she  didn't  have  to  wait  so  long.  She  became 
dimly  aware  that  the  battle  (with  everybody  talking 
at  once)  had  quieted  markedly,  and  that  the  genial 
university  gentleman  was  replying  to  something 
(subject  matter  regrettably  unheard)  that  Mr.  Traill 
had  said.  He  seemed  to  approve  of  Mr.  Traill.  He 
nodded  energetically  several  times,  and  even  brought 
one  fist  down  on  the  table  before  him  with  a  mild 
and  harmless  bang. 

"That,"  said  the  university  gentleman,  "is  a 
well-timed  and  well-sounded  note.  I'm  glad  to  hear 
you  bring  that  out.  We  of  all  people  have  got  to 
bear  in  mind  the  larger  vision.  We've  got  to  con 
sider  not  only  the  problem  of  the  unprotected,  under- 

[78] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

paid  working-girl,  but  the  bigger  problem  of  the 
tendency  of  the  race.  We've  got  to  climb  a  hill  now 
and  then,  and  have  a  look  at  the  horizon." 

He  nodded  again,  this  time  toward  Miss  King. 

"Don't  forget  that!" 

"I'm  a  species  of  soldier,"  Miss  King  said,  stolidly. 
"I'll  leave  horizons  to  the  philosophers." 

But  the  university  gentleman  shook  his  head  at 
her,  and  laughed. 

"You're  a  general  officer.  It's  part  of  your 
job  to  spy  out  the  land.  Come  up  on  the  hilltop !  .  .  . 
But  the  deuce  of  it  is,"  he  complained,  "it's 
so  difficult  to  get  ashore  where  the  hill  is.  I  see 
society  as  a  kind  of  raft  floating  down  a  river  toward 
the  Lord  knows  what." 

"Then  you'd  better  stick  on  board  if  it's  all  as 
helpless  as  that,"  said  his  hostess,  and  he  laughed 
once  more. 

"I'll  climb  the  mast  instead.  You'll  allow  me 
a  masthead,  surely?  And  after  all,  though  nobody 
knows  just  what  the  country  is  going  to  be  like  down 
stream,  we  know  what  it  has  been  up  stream — bends 
and  shallows  and  rapids,  and  sandbars  and  all. 
That's  something  to  have  learned.  We  can  keep  our 
eye  out  for  at  least  the  familiar  perils  as  well  as 
attending  to  the  health  and  spirits  of  the  crew. 
That's  what  I  take  Mr. — Mr.  Traill's  warning  note  to 
mean;  that  we  must  remember  we're  a  raft  in  a 
river,  and  not  an  island  in  the  sea. 

"Perhaps  Mr.  Traill  and  I  don't  make  out  the 

[79] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

same  landscape  from  our  masthead,  but  at  any  rate 
we  climb  up  to  have  a  look." 

"What  do  you  see?"  one  of  the  ladies  asked;  and 
he  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"Oh,  well — some  form  of  socialism,  I  suppose. 
It  looks  like  that  at  a  distance.  The  tendency 
nowadays  is  all  toward  increased  cohesion — com 
bination — centralization.  Industries  combine,  capi 
tal  piles  up  in  the  hands  of  a  few,  the  government 
first  regulates,  then  takes  the  thing  over  bodily; 
and  there  you  are. 

"You,  I  gather,"  he  said,  nodding  across  at 
Traill — "you  take  the  other  end  of  the  wager." 

And  Traill  said: 

"Yes.  I'm  an  anarchist — of  a  sort.  I'm  for 
freedom;  and  socialism  doesn't  seem  to  me  to 
provide  that.  Equality  isn't  freedom.  A  lot  of  peo 
ple  shut  up  inside  stone  walls  and  iron  bars  aren't 
free  just  because  their  cells  are  of  the  same  size  and 
because  they  have  the  same  food." 

The  elder  man  grinned  and  shook  his  head. 

"  *  Stone  walls  do  not  a  prison  make, 
Nor  iron  bars  a  cage.' 

There's  a  certain  word  you  and  I  could  quarrel  over 
quite  pleasantly.  Indeed,  I  hope  we  may.  But, 
meantime,  I  think  you'll  have  to  confess  that  the 
signs  of  the  times  point  my  way  (right  or  wrong), 
rather  than  yours.  What?" 
Traill  answered: 

[80] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"It  seemed  to  me,  the  last  time  I  climbed  that 
mast,  I  saw  a  waterfall  in  your  river." 

And  the  university  gentleman  was  much  diverted 
and  laughed  aloud. 

"A  waterfall!  That's  good.  That's  excellent.  So 
you  anticipate  a  thorough-going  shipwreck.  Well, 
what  then  ?  Hold  forth !  expatiate !  I  want  to  listen . ' ' 

Traill,  who  had  been  lounging  somewhat  in 
elegantly,  sat  up  in  his  chair  and  lifted  his  head. 
Hope  sat  up  too,  with  a  sudden  excitement,  for  she 
knew  one  of  those  splendid  tirades  was  coming,  and 
she  was  eager  to  hear  it.  She  felt  the  oddest  sense 
of  personal  pride  and  responsibility  in  the  man,  just 
as  if  she  had  discovered  him  or  made  him  what  he 
was;  and  she  was  immensely  impressed  by  the  inter 
est  and  respect  he  had  awakened  in  the  California 
university  gentleman. 

But  just  as  Traill  was  about  to  begin  one  of  the 
ladies  present  glanced  at  her  watch,  emitted  a  little 
scream,  and  said  she  must  be  off  at  once,  for  she  was 
half  an  hour  late  for  an  engagement.  She  was  very 
apologetic  and  earnest  about  not  wishing  to  break 
the  party  up,  and  begged  them  to  let  her  slip  out 
quietly;  but  two  of  the  others  had  to  go,  also,  and 
the  rest  began  to  peer  at  their  watches  and  look 
uneasy. 

Hope  was  disappointed  and  angry,  but  Traill  lay 
back  again  in  his  chair  with  what  at  least  seemed 
like  great  indifference,  and  was  heard  to  say  that  it 
was  too  long  a  story  anyhow. 

[81] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

In  the  bustle  of  general  departure  she  found  him 
close  beside  her,  speaking. 

"When  can  I  see  you — outside,  somewhere,  not 
here?" 

She  frowned  a  little  uneasily. 

"I  don't  much  like  that  sort  of  thing.  It's 
rather — unpleasant,  isn't  it?" 

But  he  pressed  her  hurriedly. 

"Just  once!  I'll  explain  then.  It  can't  do  any 
harm  just  for  once." 

And  after  a  moment  she  said : 

"Oh,  very  well,  then.  I'll  walk  in  the  Park  to 
morrow  morning.  Be  at  the  upper  end  of  the 
Mall,  near  the  roadway,  at  ten." 

So  she  turned  away  from  him,  and  presently  the 
university  gentleman  bore  him  off,  and  the  last  of 
the  Suffrage  ladies  made  their  adieux,  and  she  was 
left  alone  with  her  godmother. 

Miss  King  asked  her  if  she  had  been  bored,  and 
she  said,  certainly  not. 

"I  liked  that  Professor — Professor  Ward.  Is 
that  the  name?  He's  very  amusing,  and  he  makes 
you  see  things." 

"Yes,"  Miss  King  said.  "He's  a  good  man — 
perhaps  a  little  unpractical,  like  most  people  who 
specialize  in  philosophy.  He's  going  to  speak  for 
us  in  his  own  state  next  autumn,  and  he'll  be 
an  excellent  speaker.  He's  well  known  and  liked, 
and  he  has  a  way  with  him.  I'm  glad  Mrs. 
Helmsley  shut  young  Traill  up.  We  should  have 

[82] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

been  in  for  a  perfect  avalanche  of  nihilistic  rub 
bish." 

Hope  again  felt  that  acute  sense  of  personal 
association  and  pride  and  responsibility  in  this  man 
whom  she  had  seen  not  above  half  a  dozen  times. 
She  was  stirred  to  a  quite  ridiculous  anger. 

"Professor  Ward  didn't  seem  to  feel  like  that 
about  him,"  she  retorted,  and  was  on  the  point  of 
saying  a  great  deal  more,  but  realized  that  if  she 
were  not  careful  she  would  give  herself  away,  and 
so  stopped  in  time. 

"Oh,  Professor  Ward!  Well,  he's  a  philosopher. 
He  likes  discussion.  He  likes  to  draw  foolish  people 
out  and  then  smash  them  neatly.  School  teachers 
are  all  like  that.  For  me,  I'm  just  a  plain,  practical 
worker.  I  don't  pretend  to  climb  hills  or  mastheads. 
I  want  to  see  all  the  people  on  that  raft  of  Ward's 
in  possession  of  an  equal  chance  for  life,  health, 
and  happiness.  The  rest  I'm  content  to  leave  to 
Providence  and  the  good  sense  of  the  crew — the 
whole  crew,  men  and  women.  It  strikes  me,  you 
know,  that  Professor  Ward  is  too  anxious  to  play 
God,  and  Mr.  Traill  to  play  the  man  with  the  torch 
and  bomb.  Well,  I've  got  some  letters  to  write. 
Are  you  going  out  again?" 

Miss  King  started  to  go  up  the  stairs,  but  halted 
on  the  first  step  and  looked  down  at  her  goddaughter, 
her  blue  eyes  gleaming  in  their  odd  fashion  behind 
the  big,  round  spectacles. 

"I  seem  to  feel  a  little  sympathy  in  you  toward 

[83] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

that  young  man.  He  talked  to  you  in  New  Haven, 
didn't  he?  Well,  look  out  for  people  who  wave  their 
arms  and  shout  about  Freedom.  They  don't  mean 
freedom — they  mean  license." 

Hope  thought,  "How  extraordinarily  blind  and 
prejudiced  and  violent  elderly  women  can  be  when 
they've  taken  a  dislike  to  somebody !" 

She  watched  Miss  King  up  the  stairs,  and  heard 
her  enter  that  front  room  where  the  secretary  sat 
all  day  over  a  typewriter.  Then  she  went  on  up 
herself  to  her  own  habitation.  She  was  quite  seeth 
ing  with  what  seemed  to  her  righteous  indignation. 

What  conceivable  reason  could  Aunt  Alice  believe 
herself  to  have  for  her  attitude  toward  a  man  who 
had  rendered  her  faithful  and  useful  service  and 
about  whose  private  ideals  she  was  confessedly  very 
vague?  It  was  one  of  those  absurd  "Dr.  Fell" 
instances  that  most  people  are  ashamed  of  catching 
themselves  in. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  broad,  pleasant  space  of  the  Mall  was 
thronged  that  morning,  as  it  usually  is,  by 
nurses  and  children.  There  were  terrifying  respect 
able  English  nurses,  in  prim  gray  caps  and  capes; 
there  were  stout,  comfortable  French  nou-nous  with 
gay  ribbons  down  their  backs;  there  were  Irish 
women  from  more  modest  homes;  and  big-little 
sisters  from  very  humble  homes  indeed.  The  chil 
dren,  if  they  were  very  tiny,  lay  and  slept  in  high, 
flat,  black,  fashionable  prams,  built  like  landaus, 
or  across  their  nurses'  laps;  or  if  they  were  able  to 
toddle  about  they  made  staggering,  perilous  voyages 
of  a  fathom  or  two;  or  if  they  were  bigger  still  they 
raced  up  and  down  the  Mall  with  hoops  as  tall  as 
themselves,  or  played  little  games,  or  tossed  diabolo 
spools  to  the  peril  of  the  passer-by. 

It  was  a  June  morning,  come  untimely  in  May, 
with  a  summer  sun  and  a  little  casual  warm,  sweet 
breeze,  and  the  grass  and  leaves  round  about  were 
the  freshest,  brightest  green  imaginable;  they  looked 
good  enough  to  eat  or  to  make  a  boutonniere  of— 
according  as  your  appetite  or  your  sense  of  beauty 
might  chance  to  be  uppermost. 

[85] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Hope,  in  a  flowery  hat,  arrived  a  few  minutes  after 
ten,  and  a  little  breathless,  for  she  had  hurried.  Mr. 
Traill  was  not  at  once  to  be  seen,  and  so  she  walked 
slowly  up  the  long,  straight  stretch  of  the  asphalt  to 
its  top,  and  down  again,  and  once  more  back  to  a 
point  near  the  roadway. 

If  he  had  cared  very,  very  much  he  might  have 
taken  the  trouble  to  be  on  time.  After  all,  it  was  he 
who  had  asked  for  this  meeting. 

A  little  girl  with  flying  yellow  hair  and  bare  legs 
ran  a  gigantic  hoop  against  her  as  she  stood  hesi 
tating,  and  she  took  refuge  upon  one  of  the  benches 
at  the  side  of  the  promenade. 

Of  course,  any  one  of  twenty  things  might  quite 
legitimately  have  delayed  him.  Still — well,  it  was 
just  a  bit  humiliating  to  wait  for  a  man.  That  was 
the  wrong  way  about. 

But  after  a  moment  or  two  of  this  she  began  to 
watch  the  children  about  her  and  to  meet  their  shy, 
curious,  friendly  glances,  and  presently  she  almost 
forgot  Mr.  Traill  altogether. 

A  pair  of  grown-ups  halted  in  their  slow  walk  a 
short  distance  from  where  she  sat,  and  Hope  heard 
the  woman  say  in  a  very  wistful  tone: 

"Oh,  I  wish  they  were  mine,  Cecil!  All  of  them, 
little  and  big.  I  should  love  so  to  mother  them  all !" 

"All  the  clean  ones,"  nodded  her  companion. 

But  the  woman  said:  "All  of  them — clean  and 
grubby.  They'd  soon  be  clean,  I  promise  you." 

And  the  man  laughed  and  said:  "Yes,  I'll  go  bail 

[86] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

on  that.  Well,  they  are  jolly  little  beggars."  Then 
he  turned  grave  for  a  moment,  and  added  in  a  lower 
tone:  "There's  something  all  wrong  about  the  dis 
tribution  of  blessings  in  this  world.  A  lot  of  these 
youngsters  weren't  particularly  wanted  in  their  own 
homes,  and  are  being  looked  upon  every  day  as 
nuisances.  If  only — " 

But  the  woman  touched  his  arm,  saying:  "Don't, 
don't,  Cecil!  I  can't  bear  it." 

And  he  said  in  a  very  gruff  tone  that  didn't  sound 
in  the  least  natural  for  him: 

"All  right,  old  girl!  All  right!  But  it's  a  dashed 
shame,  for  all  that." 

This  seemed  to  Hope  an  exceptionally  pathetic 
little  conversation,  and  she  felt  quite  teary  over  it, 
and  looked  with  great  interest  at  the  two  people, 
who  had  now  turned  in  her  direction  so  that  she  could 
see  their  faces.  The  woman,  who  might  have  been 
thirty  or  thirty-five,  though  her  hair  had  begun  to 
turn  gray,  was  rather  simply  but  very  well  dressed, 
and  had,  as  Hope  thought,  the  sweetest  and  kindliest 
face  she  had  ever  seen.  There  was  something 
vaguely  familiar  about  the  face,  too,  as  if  she  might 
have  met  this  lady  before;  but  she  couldn't,  as  the 
phrase  goes,  "place"  her  at  all,  and  decided  that 
it  must  be  merely  a  resemblance  to  some  one  she 
had  once  known.  The  man  was  older,  and  grizzled, 
with  a  heavy  mustache,  and  looked  rather  English. 

The  little  girl  with  the  flying  yellow  hair  and 
bare  legs,  but  this  time  without  her  gigantic  hoop, 

[87] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

came  along  just  then,  singing  to  herself;  and  the 
woman,  who  wanted  to  mother  so  many,  and  was  no 
mother  at  all,  cried  out:  "Oh,  what  a  darling! 
Cecil,  look  at  her!"  and  captured  the  child  and  tried 
to  talk  to  her. 

One  might  think  the  little  yellow-haired  girl  would 
have  felt  and  responded  to  that  passion  of  yearning 
and  thwarted  motherhood,  especially  when  it  was 
coupled  with  the  kindest  face  in  the  world,  but  she 
didn't.  She  was  bored,  and  presently  backed  and 
wriggled  away,  and  with  an  odd  perversity  ran  to 
where  Hope  sat  watching,  and  buried  her  face  in 
Hope's  lap. 

Hope  was  delighted,  for  she  adored  children,  and 
pulled  her  new  friend  up  higher,  and  held  her  tight. 

It  gave  her  the  oddest,  most  breathless  feeling, 
almost  as  if  she  wanted  to  cry — the  hot  little  face 
burrowing  under  her  chin,  the  clasp  of  those  small 
clinging  arms. 

The  other  woman,  after  a  moment's  hesitation, 
came  slowly  nearer.  It  was  as  if  she  couldn't  help 
it.  She  smiled  with  a  little  apologetic  bow,  and  asked : 

"Is  that  your  little  girl?  Oh  no!  Of  course  it 
can't  be.  I  didn't  see  how  young  you  were." 

Hope  laughed  across  the  child's  head. 

"No.  I  wish  she  were.  I  never  saw  her  until  a 
few  moments  ago.  Children  often  come  to  me 
like  that." 

She  hadn't  meant  to  be  cruel,  but  the  other 
woman's  lips  quivered. 

[88] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"She'd  like  me,  too,  if  she  only  knew  me,"  the 
other  woman  said,  bravely,  and  tried  to  smile  again, 
and  presently  turned  away. 

Hope  became  aware  of  Traill  hovering  uncertainly 
near  by,  but  she  was  in  no  hurry  for  him  just  then, 
and  let  him  hover.  The  child  took  its  arms  from 
about  her  neck,  and  leaned  back. 

"What's  your  name?"  it  demanded. 

"My  name's  Hope,"  Hope  said. 

But  the  little  girl  retorted,  indignantly:  "No,  it's 
not!  It  can't  be.  'Cause  my  name's  Hope." 

Hope  laughed  aloud  with  surprise. 

"How  very  funny!  Well,  it  just  is,  all  the  same. 
Can't  there  be  two  Hopes  in  the  world?" 

" There's  free,"  the  little  girl  said.  "My  muvver's 
name's  Hope,  too."  And  with  the  abruptness  of  a 
humming-bird  she  wriggled  off  her  friend's  knee  to 
the  ground  and  ran  away. 

Then  Mr.  Traill  came  up,  and  took  off  his  hat 
and  began  to  apologize  for  being  so  late.  He  wanted 
to  explain  just  how  it  had  happened,  but  Hope 
cut  him  short. 

"Oh,  I  don't  mind.  I've  made  a  little  friend, 
and  seen  the  sweetest  woman  who  looks  like  some 
one,  but  I  can't  think  who  it  is.  Let's  not  sit  here! 
Let's  walk!  Do  you  mind?" 

She  rose,  and  they  turned  up  the  Mall  toward  the 
roadway,  and  the  steps  that  led  down  toward  the 
lake  beyond.  They  passed  the  sweet-faced  woman 
and  her  husband,  or  friend,  or  whatever  he  was,  and 

[89] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

the  woman  made  the  very  slightest  bow,  and  looked 
from  Hope  to  Mr.  Traill  and  back  again;  and  when 
she  must  have  thought  the  two  young  people  were 
out  of  hearing  she  said  to  her  companion  something 
about  "that  beautiful  girl."  It  conveyed  no  new 
or  startling  idea  to  Hope's  mind,  but  she  found  her 
self  inexplicably  glad  that  this  woman  in  particular 
thought  her  good-looking. 

Traill,  who  had  caught  the  stranger's  words  too, 
laughed,  and  turned  to  look  at  Hope.  He  said: 

"That's  a  woman  of  discernment — if  you  don't 
mind  my  mentioning  it." 

And  Hope  blushed  red,  and  was  furious  with  her 
self.  It  seemed  to  her  that  she  was  always  blushing 
when  Traill  was  about.  She  must  look  like  a  perfect 
fool. 

Perhaps  it  was  worth  while,  though.  '  Oh  yes, 
it  was  decidedly  worth  more  than  a  blush  or  two  to 
know  that  he  thought  her  beautiful — if  he  really  did 
think  it.  She  stole  a  sidelong  glance  at  him,  and 
he  was  not  smiling.  He  was  quite  grave — almost 
solemn. 

She  began  to  realize  herself  again  under  the  spell 
of  that  mood  which  had  so  powerfully  swayed  her 
the  evening  before,  and  in  which  she  had  left  the 
house  this  morning.  Her  impatience  over  waiting, 
and  her  encounter  with  the  yellow-haired  child,  had 
dissipated  it  a  little,  but  the  sight  of  this  man,  the 
sound  of  his  voice,  called  it  back  with  great  force. 

They  skirted  the  low-lying  lake,  where  little  boys 

[90] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

were  sailing  boats,  and  mounted  a  part  of  the  slope 
beyond. 

"Let's  sit  down,"  Hope  said,  when  they  had 
turned  into  an  unfrequented  path.  "I  think  I  don't 
feel  like  walking  far.  It's  rather  warm."  So  they 
found  a  bench,  and  took  possession  of  it. 

She  had  been  conscious  of  his  eyes  upon  her  as 
they  walked,  and  she  was  conscious  of  them  now, 
though  she  looked  away  across  the  lake  toward  Fifth 
Avenue  with  a  fine  pretense  of  disregard.  It  made 
her  uncomfortable  to  be  stared  at  like  that,  but  the 
misery  was  not  altogether  disagreeable.  It  had  a 
degree  of  excitement  about  it,  anyhow.  And,  besides, 
she  was  still  in  her  mood  of  uplift  and  mental  ex 
hilaration,  and  of  keen  sympathy  with — well,  with 
what  would  have  been  a  little  difficult  for  her  to 
explain — -with,  so  she  might  perhaps  have  put  it, 
all  this  man  stood  for  and  preached  and  professed 
to  carry  out  in  his  life. 

And  she  was  still  very  angry  with  Aunt  Alice 
King. 

"Well,"  Traill  said,  after  a  space  of  silence,  "I  got 
to  you  at  last." 

"Got  to  me?  Oh — you  mean  yesterday!  That 
was  a  pretty  accidental  meeting,  wasn't  it?  You 
never  called,  as  you  might  have  done." 

He  said  "Ho"  with  a  little  scornful  laugh.  "D'you 
suppose  I  should  have  been  allowed  to  see  you  if 
I  had  called?  Do  you  suppose  I  should  have  been 
asked  to  lunch  yesterday  if  Miss  King  had  known 

7  [91] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

you  were  coming?  Not  by  a  good  deal!  I've  been 
trying  to  get  asked  to  lunch  there  for  a  week.  I 
have  to  go  to  the  house  to  make  reports  every  day 
or  two,  and  I've  gone  at  half  past  twelve,  or  even 
later,  in  the  hope  of  being  invited  to  stay.  But  she 
wouldn't  do  it.  So  yesterday  I  said  I  had  something 
I'd  like  to  talk  over  with  her  at  length,  and  she 
thought  you  meant  to  lunch  out,  and  stepped  into 
my  trap.  Of  course,  you  might  not  have  turned 
up,  but  I  had  to  take  the  chance.  Did  you  see  her 
face  when  you  came  in?  I  did.  She's  determined 
you  and  I  sha'n't  meet.  That's  the  plain  truth  of 
it." 

"But  why?"  Hope  demanded.  "Granted,  for 
the  moment,  that  it's  true,  why?" 

Traill  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "Oh,  she  doesn't 
like  me.  How  should  I  know  why?" 

And  Hope  said,  frowning:  "I  know.  It's  abomi 
nable.  It's  not  fair.  I'm  ashamed  of  Aunt  Alice." 

He  looked  up  at  her  quickly. 

"Has  she  said  anything  about  me?  What  did 
she  say?" 

"Oh — very  little — just  enough  to  show  she  wasn't 
quite  sympathetic.  Something  about  too  much 
freedom  being  license." 

She  was  angry,  and,  like  most  angry  people,  went 
further  than  she  had  meant  to  go. 

"The  real  truth  is  she's  jealous.  She  didn't  like 
it  when  Professor  What-ever-his-name-is  was  so 
pleased  over  what  you  said  at  lunch.  You  brought 

[92] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

out  something  that  didn't  strike  her  as  particularly 
worth  while,  and  when  that  other  man  made  so  much 
of  it  she  was  annoyed. 

"Don't  let's  talk  about  Aunt  Alice.  I  haven't 
forgiven  her.  It's  all  so  absurd.  You  and  she  are 
working  and  giving  your  lives  for  exactly  the  same 
thing — to  make  people  free.  And  she  bickers  and 
criticizes  and  talks  against  you.  It's  so  little  of 
her!" 

Traill  was  watching  with  a  kind  of  alert  thought- 
fulness,  but  he  made  no  comment  or  reply  to  what 
she  had  said;  and  after  a  moment,  as  if  it  occurred 
to  her  to  reassure  herself  once  for  all,  she  asked: 

"I'm  right,  of  course?'  You  and  Aunt  Alice  are 
both  working  for  the  same  thing — freedom?" 

Traill  said,  readily:  "Oh  yes!  We're  both  work 
ing  for  freedom.  I'm  working  for  a  better  kind, 
and  for  more  of  it,  or  so  it  seems  to  me;  but  that's 
about  the  only  difference  between  us.  It's  a  differ 
ence  of  degree.  I  think  I  see  farther  than  she  does." 

"Of  course."  Hope  invented  a  little  figure  of 
speech  to  help  her  comprehension.  "If  a  man  who's 
been  for  years  in  a  dungeon  is  let  out  into  the  sun 
shine  with  his  chains  still  on  he's  freer  than  he 
was — heap  freer.  But  you  want  to  take  the  chains 
off,  too." 

And  Traill  laughed  and  nodded.  "That's  very 
well  put.  I  couldn't  hope  to  put  it  better." 

At  any  rate,  he  didn't  try,  but  sat  silent  in  his 
place,  turned  half  about,  with  his  folded  arms  resting 

[93] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

on  the  back  of  the  bench,  and  he  watched  her  face, 
smiling. 

Few  things  are  more  difficult  to  endure,  even 
when  you  like  it.  Hope  looked  away  and  back  again, 
and  up  and  down,  and  frowned  a  little,  and  finally 
burst  out: 

"For  heaven's  sake  say  something!  I  can't  bear 
being  watched  like  that.  It  makes  me  nervous. 
Talk  to  me  the  way  you  did  in  New  Haven.  That 
was  an  experience  for  me,  you  know.  You're  the 
first  person — did  I  tell  you? — who  ever  talked  to 
me  seriously  about  ideas.  You  got  me  into  quite  a 
glow.  That  sounds  flippant,  but  I  don't  mean  it  to. 
It's  the  sober  truth.  I  almost  began  to  think, 
myself.  Then  I  came  here  to  New  York,  and  it  got 
rather  lost — almost  forgotten,  but  not  quite.  It 
was  beginning  to  seem  very  far  away  until  I  came 
into  that  dining-room  yesterday  and  you  were  there. 
Then  it  came  back  again  all  in  a  flash.  Do  go  on 
about  it  some  more!" 

Traill  smiled  again  and  nodded,  still  with  his 
eyes  upon  her  face.  And  after  a  moment  he  said : 

"All  right,  beautiful  lady,  I'll  try." 

One  must  assume  that  the  man  was  skilful  at  this 
kind  of  thing.  He  had,  undeniably,  great  confidence 
in  himself  (I  put  it  as  politely  as  may  be),  and  a 
rough  and  blustery  eloquence.  He  had  a  pretty 
good  subject,  too,  and,  Heaven  knows,  a  willing 
listener,  already  prepared  and  convinced. 

Hope  sat  beside  him  quite  still,  as  he  talked,  and 

[94] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

sometimes  she  seemed  to  be  listening  with  an  almost 
painful  intentness,  as  if  his  thought  was  hard  to 
follow  and  she  was  afraid  of  losing  the  trail;  and 
sometimes  she  looked  away  among  the  trees  and 
seemed  hardly  to  be  listening  at  all,  but  rather 
dreaming  over  the  pictures  the  man  made  for  her. 

And  once,  at  the  end  of  one  of  these  periods  of 
seeming  abstraction,  she  turned  rather  abruptly  to 
him — he  had  been  saying  how  the  great  cause  of 
Freedom  had  its  martyrs,  like  every  other  great  cause 
— pioneers — brave  forerunners,  who  must  suffer  to 
show  the  world  how  to  be  free.  She  said  with 
shining  eyes: 

"That  would  be  worth  while,  wouldn't  it,  to 
suffer  martyrdom  in  a  cause  like  that?" 

And  Traill  looked  up  at  her  sharply,  and  was  silent 
for  a  moment.  Then  he  said:  "It  wants  courage, 
you  know." 

*  *  Courage  ?  Oh  ' ' — she  was  rather  scornful — * '  any 
thing  big  wants  courage,  I  suppose.  Lots  of  us  are 
brave  enough.  If  one  were  perfectly  sure." 

Nevertheless,  the  very  sound  of  those  bold  words 
seemed  to  frighten  her  a  little,  for  she  looked  a  bit 
startled  and  began  to  say  something  further,  but 
stopped  halfway,  and  sat  frowning  down  at  her 
hands  as  if  she  had  taken  a  sudden  dislike  to  them. 

"Oh,  well,  never  mind  that!  What  an  idiotic  thing 
to  say!  It's  just — that  I  was  interested.  Go  on,  do!" 

Traill  continued  to  watch  her  averted  face  in  a 
thoughtful  silence,  but  presently  shook  his  head. 

[95] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"No;  I'm  tired  of  speechifying.  It's  enough  for 
one  day.  Let's  talk  about  something  else!  Let's 
talk  about  you!  Have  you  been  seeing  a  lot  of 
Mrs.  Darnley?  I  told  you  I  knew  her,  didn't  I? 
That  is,  I've  met  her  several  times — once  at  the 
Trevor  Hulls'  and  once  or  twice  at  the  opera.  I 
meant  to  ask  her,  the  last  time,  to  let  me  call,  but 
some  one  else  came  up  just  then  and  I  couldn't. 
I  suppose  if  you  and  I  were  walking  some  afternoon 
we  might  drop  in  there  at  tea-time." 

Hope  said,  a  little  hurriedly: 

"Yes.  Yes;  to  be  sure.  We  must  do  that,  one 
day.  My  cousin  will  be  delighted." 

She  was  desperately  anxious  to  get  the  man  out  of 
this  unbecoming  vein,  and  did  it  by  asking  him  a 
rather  silly  question — the  first  thing  that  came  into 
her  head.  At  another  time  when  she  was  more  in 
possession  of  the  critical  faculties,  she  might  have 
been  seriously  dashed  by  this  grotesque  turn  of 
snobbishness,  but  she  was  at  too  great  a  height 
to-day  to  mind  very  much.  She  just  wished  he 
wouldn't — very  much  as  she  might  have  wished 
that  he  wouldn't  put  his  pocket  handkerchief  up 
his  sleeve  as  he  had  seen  gentlemen  do  on  the  stage — 
and  took  the  quickest  way  of  stopping  him,  and  went 
back  to  her  dreams.  But  the  spell  had  been  just 
the  least  bit  dimmed,  the  perfection  of  it  a  little 
spoilt,  and  rather  than  lose  it  altogether  she  shut 
it  up,  as  it  were,  within  her,  and  said  the  hour  was 
growing  late,  and  she  must  go  back  to  Fortieth  Street. 

[96] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

Traill  was  disappointed,  and  showed  it.  He 
hadn't  hah*  done  with  what  he  had  wanted  to  say, 
he  protested.  But  Hope  said  he  might  walk  down 
with  her  if  he  liked,  and  that  seemed  to  pacify  him 
a  little. 

She  was  obscurely  conscious  that  she  would  rather 
have  been  alone.  She  wanted  to  think. 

They  didn't  walk,  though,  as  it  turned  out.  The 
sun  was  a  little  warm  in  the  Avenue,  so  they  took  a 
bus  instead,  and  when  they  had  left  it  at  their  corner, 
Traill  walked  along  Fortieth  Street  with  her  to  her 
godmother's  door. 

Miss  Sprague,  the  secretary,  was  just  leaving  the 
house  as  they  reached  it  and  eyed  them  with  some 
surprise.  It  was  rather  a  nuisance,  Hope  thought, 
but  it  couldn't  be  helped  now;  and,  besides,  she  didn't 
believe  Miss  Sprague  would  tell  Aunt  Alice.  She 
met  Traill's  eye,  and  laughed  a  little.  She  thought 
he  seemed  rather  disturbed. 

He  asked  her  as  they  parted:  "When  am  I  going 
to  see  you  again?  I  can't  come  here,  you  know." 

And  Hope  answered  without  even  stopping  to 
take  thought: 

"Whenever  you  like.  To-morrow?  All  right, 
then.  The  same  place  at  ten." 

And  she  had  made  some  progress  of  a  sort,  for  this 
time  the  clandestine  character  of  these  meetings 
never  even  occurred  to  her.  She  was  quite  un 
ashamed. 


CHAPTER  VII 

MISS  KING  was  intermittently  conscious  of  not 
being  quite  the  perfect  hostess  to  her  god 
daughter;  and  when  this  consciousness  was  in  its  act 
ive  periods  she  really  felt  a  little  distress  and  shame, 
for  when  she  had  asked  Hope  to  visit  her  she  had 
expected  to  be  able  to  devote  at  least  a  part  of  her 
time  to  the  girl's  entertainment.  But  unlooked-for 
complications  had  arisen  in  two  or  three  directions 
so  that  she  had  been  compelled  to  work  harder  than 
almost  ever  before,  and  when  she  stopped  to  think 
of  it  she  realized  that  about  all  Hope  had  had  from 
her  was  a  house  and  a  few  meals. 

However,  the  child  seemed  to  get  on  well  enough, 
and  certainly  looked  quite  contented.  To  be  sure, 
there  had  been  one  period  of  a  day  or  two  when,  for 
some  unknown  reason,  her  manner  had  been  a  bit 
strained,  and  she  had  seemed  to  avoid  Miss  King's 
company;  but  that  cloud,  if  indeed  it  ever  existed 
at  all,  had  passed  promptly  enough,  leaving  the  sun 
shine  as  bright  as  ever. 

Young  girls  were  extraordinary  creatures,  anyhow, 
Miss  King  reflected,  with  their  inexplicable  shifts  of 
mood,  their  alternate  and  seemingly  causeless  ups  and 

[98] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

downs.  Their  mental  processes  were  conducted  by 
no  known  rule,  and  it  meant  only  fatigue  and  ultimate 
defeat  to  try  to  understand  them.  She  endeavored 
once  or  twice  to  gain  some  light  on  the  subject  by 
looking  back  across  a  good  many  years  in  her  own 
life,  but  she  couldn't  remember  that  she  had  ever 
been  very  young  or  very  unaccountable.  It  seemed 
to  her  that  she  had  begun  to  think  in  adult  terms 
almost  as  soon  as  she  could  walk. 

She  must  have  been  a  remarkable  child. 

She  was,  when  she  had  time  to  think  of  it,  a  good 
deal  disappointed  in  one  particular  thing.  She  had 
hoped  for  an  opportunity  during  this  visit  to  talk  to 
Hope  rather  seriously  about  Equal  Suffrage,  but 
except  for  those  luncheon-table  symposia,  which 
were,  of  course,  over  the  girl's  head,  there  had  been 
scarcely  any  conversation  on  the  subject.  The 
leisure  had  been  wanting. 

Well,  that  must  be,  she  said,  for  the  future.  After 
all,  Hope  was  a  mere  child.  Let  her  "come  out" 
and  have  her  year  or  two  of  gaiety!  She  would 
soon  tire  of  that.  She  had  brains — or  Miss  King 
was  badly  mistaken — and  had  already  shown  an 
indication  or  two  of  thoughtfulness.  Give  her  a 
year  or  two  to  play  in,  and  then  one  should  see. 

Meanwhile  she  didn't  seem  too  badly  bored  or  dis 
appointed  in  her  New  York  visit.  She  sat  at  table 
or  moved  about  the  house  with  that  dreamy  far 
away  smile  so  characteristic  of  young  girls,  she 
walked  and  shopped,  and  she  saw  a  good  deal  of  the 

[99] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Darnleys.  Altogether,  one  might  be  sure  she  was 
not  to  be  worried  over. 

Nevertheless,  Miss  King  received  a  protest  on  the 
subject  from  an  unexpected  source,  and  was  a  little 
amused  and  diverted  by  it.  She  told  Hope  at  dinner 
that  night,  when  the  two  were  alone  together  for  the 
first  time  in  some  days: 

"Miss  Sprague  —  my  secretary,  you  know  —  re 
monstrated  with  me  this  morning  on  your  account. 
She  said  I  was  a  bad  hostess,  and  left  you  altogether 
too  much  alone.  I'm  afraid  it's  true,  too.  In  fact, 
I  know  it's  true.  But  there  has  been  such  a  rush  of 
work!  You've  no  idea." 

Hope  looked  up  with  startled  eyes,  for  the  day 
before  she  and  Mr.  Traill  had  once  more  passed  the 
secretary  in  the  street,  though  Miss  Sprague  had 
appeared  not  to  see  them. 

"Miss  Sprague!  How  very  odd!  Did  she  say 
anything  more?" 

Hope  watched  her  godmother's  face  with  some 
anxiety,  but  Miss  King  beamed  across  at  her  with 
the  kindly,  somewhat  absent  expression  that  she 
always  wore  when  her  mind  was  not  on  her 
words. 

"No.  I  think  that  was  all.  It  was  a  little  pre 
suming,  of  course,  but  she's  a  good  soul,  and  you 
mustn't  mind.  She  adores  you,  you  know,  in  a  sort 
of  moth-and-star  fashion.  She's  always  saying — 
well,  this  and  that  about  your  personal  appearance. 
Being  rather  plain  herself,  she  exaggerates  the  value 

[100] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

of  looks.  No,  I  fancy  she  just  thought  some 
one  ought  to  remind  me  that  I  was  neglecting 
you. 

"Oh,  dear  me!  I  didn't  write  to  Denver  this 
afternoon."  And  she  made  a  note  on  a  little  pad  that 
was  always  beside  her  plate  at  table,  or  hanging 
somewhere  about  her  person. 

So  Hope  had  to  be  contented  for  the  time  being, 
but  the  next  morning  at  an  hour  when  she  knew  her 
godmother  had  gone  out  to  a  meeting  at  the  head 
quarters  of  her  organization,  she  went  into  the 
secretary's  room  on  the  pretext  of  borrowing  some 
ink.  She  had  gone  there  without  any  particular 
plan  of  action,  but  luckily  the  secretary  turned  the 
conversation  into  the  very  channel  she  wished. 
She  asked  Hope  if  she  didn't  find  it  dull  in  New  York 
at  this  time  of  the  year,  and  Hope  said,  no,  not  at  all, 
that  she  hadn't  come  for  gaiety,  and  was  having  a 
very  pleasant  time  indeed  in  a  quiet  way. 

"Aunt  Alice  told  me  you  had  been  scolding  her  for 
neglecting  me  so  much;  but  it's  really  all  right.  I 
have  some  cousins  here  who  do  a  great  deal  for  me, 
and — well,  I  don't  mind  being  quiet.  I'm  truly 
glad  Aunt  Alice  doesn't  feel  that  she  has  to  bother 
herself.  So  you  mustn't  scold  her  any  more!" 

There  was  a  large  table  against  one  wall  of  the 
room,  with  piles  of  little  green  or  white  pamphlets  on 
it,  all  having  to  do  with  The  Cause — brief  arguments, 
they  seemed  to  be,  or  tables  of  statistics  or  reports  of 
commissions.  And  almost  the  first  one  that  caught 

[101] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

her  eye  was  entitled,  "Woman  and  Freedom,"  by 
Archibald  Traill. 

At  Hope's  involuntary  exclamation  and  movement 
Miss  Sprague  crossed  the  room  with  a  tall  ink  bottle 
in  her  hand.  She  said: 

"Oh,  you're  looking  at  that  Mr.  Traill's  pamphlet? 
Some  of  the  others  are  better,  if  you  want  to  get  a 
clear  idea  of  the  movement.  That's  just  a  little — 
advanced,  perhaps." 

She  asked,  filling  her  visitor's  inkwell  carefully 
from  the  tall  bottle: 

"You  know  him,  don't  you?" 

And  Hope  said:  "Oh  yes!  I  met  him  in  New 
Haven,  first.  He  knows  my  cousin,  Mrs.  Darnley." 

"It's  odd  about  Mr.  Traill,"  the  secretary  said, 
still  pouring  ink  with  great  care  from  the  tall  bottle. 
"Miss  King's  butler — Ribbs,  you  know — won't  call 
him  'sir'  when  he  lets  him  into  the  house,  and  he 
won't  let  the  second  man  call  him  *sir,'  either.  I 
overheard  them  talking  about  it  one  day." 

"I'm  afraid  you  should  have  told  my  godmother," 
Hope  said,  coldly.  "It  seems  to  me  a  very  un 
warrantable  impertinence  on  Ribbs's  part.  He 
wasn't  engaged,  I  should  think,  to  make  distinctions 
among  the  callers  here." 

"Oh?"  inquired  Miss  Sprague,  doubtfully.  She 
had  the  air  of  seeking  information.  "Isn't  that  one 
of  the  things  butlers  are  engaged  for?  Of  course,  I 
don't  know,  myself.  Butlers  haven't  come  very 
much  into  my  career.  But  I  imagined — " 

[102] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

She  stopped  and  set  down  the  tall  ink  bottle,  and 
a  tinge  of  red  came  into  her  sallow  cheeks. 

"Please  forgive  my  asking — I  wouldn't  do  it  just 
for  curiosity  or  anything  like  that — but,  do  you  know 
Mr.  Traill  well?" 

Hope  was  miserably  conscious  that  her  cheeks 
were  burning.  She  began: 

"Well,  really —  And  then  stopped  to  collect 
herself  and  to  make  as  natural  an  appearance  as  she 
could  manage.  She  was  extraordinarily  anxious  not 
to  give  herself  away.  "I  haven't  known  him  very 
long.  No,  not  what  you'd  call  well,  at  all,  I  suppose. 
I've  seen  him  only  a  few  times  altogether.  Why?" 

"It  struck  me,"  Miss  Sprague  said,  looking  at  her, 
"that  a  kind  of  cleverness  he's  got  on  the  surface 
might  deceive  some  people.  He  is  clever,  of  course. 
You  know  Miss  King  doesn't  think  he's  very  trust 
worthy." 

So  it  was  Aunt  Alice's  hand,  after  all!  Aunt 
Alice  had  been  venting  that  jealousy  and  blind  dis 
like  of  hers  to  her  secretary.  Hope  drew  a  breath  of 
relief  and  smiled. 

"Oh,  well,"  she  said,  lightly,  "tastes  differ,  don't 
they?  Aunt  Alice  wants  to  be  so  frightfully  sure 
of  people  before  she  has  anything  to  do  with  them. 
As  for  me,  I  don't  much  care  what  casual  acquaint 
ances  are  like  at  heart  if  they're  clever  and  amusing 
on  the  surface.  It  would  be  such  a  bore  to  turn 
oneself  into  a  kind  of  Spanish  Inquisition  over 
everybody  one  meets." 

[103] 

<&. 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

She  was  rather  pleased  with  that  touch  about 
"casual  acquaintances,"  and  after  she  had  thanked 
Miss  Sprague  for  the  ink  went  away  smiling. 

But  the  secretary  sat  for  rather  a  long  time  making 
meaningless  marks  with  her  pencil  on  a  sheet  of 
letter  paper  and  frowning  down  at  them.  So  it 
would  seem  that  she  was  not  as  much  pleased  as  her 
visitor  had  been. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

HOPE  had  her  breakfast  in  bed  the  next  morning, 
and  rather  late,  for  she  had  been  awake  a  good 
part  of  the  night  facing  a  problem  that  had  quite 
suddenly  and  rather  distressingly  presented  itself. 

To  put  the  thing  briefly,  Traill,  with  whom  she  had 
spent  an  afternoon  hour  in  the  park — one  of  an 
almost  daily  series  of  afternoon  hours — had,  as  the 
phrase  goes,  got  out  of  hand.  For  the  first  time  he 
had  thrown  even  the  pretense  of  lecturing  over 
board  and  made  impatient,  vigorous,  wellnigh 
violent  love  to  her. 

She  wasn't  prepared  for  it,  though  one  would  think 
she  might  have  been,  and  it  gave  her  a  genuine  shock. 

It  was  a  vivid  and  rather  terrible  picture  she  had 
to  face  through  those  long,  perturbed  hours  of  the 
night. 

He  touched  her  hands  by  some  accident  while  the 
two  of  them  were  sitting  on  a  bench.  Then  he  turned 
suddenly  red  and  caught  the  hands  close  up  to  him 
in  a  grip  that  hurt. 

She  couldn't  remember  the  words  he  used,  but  he 
had  said  something  fast  and  stammering  and 
breathless. 

[105] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

And  he  came  close  and  tried  to  kiss  her. 

She  remembered  that  she  gave  a  little  scream  and 
sprang  up,  and  that  she  had  to  make  a  brief  un 
dignified  struggle  to  get  her  hands  away.  There  was 
no  thought  in  her  of  reasons  why,  no  reflection  of  any 
kind,  just  fright — a  sort  of  panic. 

She  tried  to  escape,  but  he  wouldn't  have  that. 
He  ran  after  her,  and  she  had  to  stop.  He  was  very 
humble,  and  apologized  and  begged  for  forgiveness, 
but  something  new  and  alarming  was  in  the  air 
and  took  all  naturalness  out  of  them  both.  They 
walked  a  few  minutes,  and  presently  she  got  away 
and  fled  home  to  Fortieth  Street. 

It  seemed  to  her  in  those  night  hours  that  she 
had  been  living  in  a  kind  of  dream — an  enchantment. 
If  she  had  ever  thought  at  all  about  her  personal 
relations  with  this  man  it  had  been  a  mere  vague 
realization  that  they  were  novel  and  delightful, 
and  that  doubtless  they  would  go  on  just  as  they 
were  quite  indefinitely. 

But  I  fancy  the  real  truth  was  that  she  had  deliber 
ately  dodged  the  personal  issue  altogether. 

She  liked  him.  She  made  herself  confess  at  last 
that  she  liked  him  very  much.  She  thought  him  a 
splendid  and  heroic  figure,  but  when  it  came  to 
imagining  herself  beside  him  for  a  lifetime  she  was 
afraid.  Even  in  this  period  of  reflection,  of  stock 
taking,  she  was  afraid.  The  man  and  what  he 
preached  were  so  indissolubly  united! 

Once  she  tried  to  make  the  separation — to  consider 

[106] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

him  robbed  of  and  quite  apart  from  his  ideas — just 
the  man  without  the  doctrine.  But  he  emerged 
from  this  test  such  an  utter  stranger  that  she  was 
afraid  again  and  turned  her  eyes  away. 

The  end,  before  she  slept,  was  plain  cowardice — 
dodging  again — putting  a  too  difficult  question  off 
until  the  morrow. 

But  as  usually  happens,  the  morrow,  when  it  came, 
toward  nine  o'clock,  had  no  solution  to  offer. 

Why  couldn't  things  have  remained  as  they  were? 

She  had  finished  her  breakfast,  but  was  still  lying 
in  bed  unrefreshed  and  indolent  when  Miss  Sprague 
knocked  at  the  door  and  came  in. 

"I've  brought  a  letter,"  she  explained,  "that  got 
into  our  business  mail  by  mistake.  I  tried  to  call 
your  maid,  but  nobody  answered  the  bell,  so  I 
brought  it  in  myself." 

Hope  noticed  that  the  secretary  was  without  her 
usual  pleasant  smile. 

She  took  the  letter,  which  was  a  thick  one,  glanced 
at  the  direction,  and  instinctively  hid  it  in  the  bed 
clothes  beside  her,  for  the  writing  on  the  envelope 
was  Traill's. 

And  at  once  she  was  sure  that  Miss  Sprague  knew. 

The  secretary  stood  hesitating  for  an  instant  after 
Hope  had  thanked  her,  and  seemed  to  undergo  some 
kind  of  inner  struggle.  She  fixed  the  girl  with  eyes 
that  were  fierce  and  tender  and  affectionate  and 
resentful  all  together. 

"You  look  unhappy!"  Miss  Sprague  said,  so 
8  [ 107  ] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

harshly  that  Hope  was  almost  too  startled  to  be 
angry.  She  tried  to  answer  in  a  tone  appropriate 
to  that  presumptuous  speech. 

"  Thank  you !    I'm  all  right." 

But  the  secretary,  twisting  her  hands  before  her 
and  trembling  a  little,  swept  over  her  as  if  she  hadn't 
spoken  a  word. 

"Is  he  making  you  miserable?     Is  he?     Is  he?" 

"I  don't  know  what  you  mean."  Hope  said. 
"Please  don't  speak  to  me  like  that.  I— 

"He's  been  talking  his  abominable  Freedom  to 
you,"  Miss  Sprague  declared,  with  an  extraor 
dinary  bitterness.  "/  know.  Oh  yes,  I  should 
think  I  did.  I  know  it  all  from  beginning  to  end. 
Anarchism.  The  New  Era.  The  Beautiful  Aristoc 
racy.  Bah!  The  few  Rare  Souls  that  are  to  lead 
the  way  by  trampling  on  laws  and  morals  and  com 
mon  decency.  Do  you  think  I  don't  know?  Do 
you  think  you're  the  first  innocent  child  he  has 
preached  that  poisonous  rubbish  to?  Well,  you're 
not." 

She  was  trembling  violently  all  over,  Miss  Sprague 
was,  and  her  breath  began  to  catch  in  sobs  so  that 
she  had  to  stop  and  control  it. 

But  Hope,  huddled  in  her  bed,  stared  at  the  woman 
in  a  kind  of  daze. 

"Oh,  Miss  Standish!"  said  the  secretary,  wringing 
her  hands,  "I  can't  see  you  go  on  any  further  with 
that  man  and  not  warn  you  about  him.  I  tried 
to  yesterday.  You  remember?  But  you  wouldn't 

[108] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

listen,  and  I  said  to  myself  that  after  all  it  was  none 
of  my  affair.  Then  this  morning  that  letter  came, 
and  I  knew  it  was  from  him,  and  I  just  couldn't  keep 
still  another  minute.  I  couldn't. 

"I  might  have  spoken  to  Miss  King,  but  she'd 
have  made  a  scene,  and  you  would  have  been  angry, 
and  it  might  have  gone  from  bad  to  worse.  I  said 
to  myself  that  the  only  thing  was  to  come  straight 
to  you  and  tell  you.  Miss  Standish,  he  isn't  the  wise 
and  noble  person  you  think  he  is  at  all.  He's  a 
wicked  man — black  wicked,  through  and  through. 
He  has  been  more  heartless  and  cruel  and  inhuman 
than  you  would  believe  any  human  being  could  be — 
all  in  the  name  of  that  Freedom  of  his.  You  wouldn't 
believe  it!" 

"I  don't  believe  it,"  said  Hope,  in  a  shaking  voice. 
"Not  a  word  of  it.  He  can't  be  what  you  say.  You 
don't  know." 

"Oh,  don't  I?"  cried  the  secretary.  "I  only  wish 
I  didn't."  She  looked  at  the  girl,  frowning  as  if 
in  perplexity. 

"You  know,  I  can't  for  the  life  of  me  imagine  how 
he  had  the  courage — the  cheek  to  try  you.  You're 
not  his  kind  at  all.  He  doesn't  fly  as  high  as  that. 
And  I  should  think  he'd  be  afraid."  She  shook  her 
head  again,  as  if  she  couldn't  make  it  out  at  all,  but 
afterward  said: 

"I  suppose  it's  a  part  of  his  social  ambition.  He 
is  ambitious,  you  know,  since  he  met  some  society 
ladies  last  winter.  Probably  he  meant  to  get  you 

[109] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

to  run  away  with  him — or  something.  Then  you'd 
have  to  marry  him.  Yes,  that's  it!  You'd  marry 
him,  and  he'd  get  your  money  and  meet  your  friends, 
and  all  that.  And  he'd  risk  your  never  finding  out 
about — the  other  things." 

"I  don't  believe  it!"  Hope  said,  monotonously. 
She  hid  her  face  on  her  knees.  "It's  not  true.  I 
know  it's  not  true." 

The  secretary  came  nearer  and  lowered  her  voice. 

"Miss  Standish,  will  you  let  me  prove  it  to  you — 
what  this  Freedom  of  his  really  means?  Will  you?" 

"It's  not  true!    It's  not  true!" 

"I  can  prove  it  to  you  in  an  hour.  Miss  King 
has  gone  to  a  meeting  at  Headquarters.  She  won't 
be  back  until  one.  Will  you  come  with  me?" 

Hope  looked  up  at  her  with  a  kind  of  vacant 
misery,  and  the  secretary  said: 

"Oh,  don't  look  like  that!  My  dear!  Don't! 
How  long  will  it  take  you  to  dress?" 

"Half  an  hour." 

"Dress  yourself,  then,  and  we'll  go.  Oh,  if  you 
knew  how  it  hurts  me  to  make  you  suffer!  I've — 
admired — and  loved  you  so.  It's  been  so — wonder 
ful  to  have  you  here  in  the  house.  But  you've  got 
to  understand.  You've  got  to  see  with  your  own 
eyes.  Dear  Miss  Standish,  don't  look  like  that!  I 
can't  bear  it." 

Later,  out  in  the  street,  she  said:  "It  '11  be  quicker 
to  take  a  cab,  I  suppose.  Shall  we?" 

Hope  nodded,  and  the  secretary   signaled   to  a 

[110] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

hansom  that  was  passing  by.  Hope  lay  back  against 
the  cushions  and  closed  her  eyes.  It  was  all  ex 
ceedingly  like  a  dream. 

When  she  looked  about  her  once  more  they  were 
passing  the  Madison  Square  Garden  and  going  east. 
They  crossed  Fourth  Avenue,  where  she  had  been 
once  or  twice  to  visit  the  antiquity  shops,  and  en 
tered  a  region  slovenly  and  unfamiliar  to  her.  They 
passed  under  an  elevated  railway  line  and  drew  up 
at  last  before  one  of  a  row  of  unlovely  brick  tene 
ments,  where  ash  cans  stood  on  the  curb  and  very 
dirty  little  children  played  about  them.  There  was 
a  hurdy-gurdy  halfway  down  the  block. 

Through  a  thick,  sour  odor  of  cookery  and  the 
sound  of  a  complaining  child  they  mounted  two 
flights  of  stairs,  and  Miss  Sprague  knocked  on  a  door 
at  the  back  of  the  house.  When  she  opened  it  at  a 
call  from  within,  Hope  hung  back  a  little  in  the 
doorway  and  let  her  guide  go  on  ahead.  She  had 
come  this  far  in  a  kind  of  apathy.  It  was  exactly 
as  if  that  determined  and  efficient  secretary  of  Miss 
King's  had  picked  her  up  bodily  and  carried  her  off. 
But  now  she  was  all  at  once  awake  and  afraid  with 
a  dreadful  premonition  of  unknown  horrors.  She 
had  an  instant's  wild  panic,  and  all  but  turned  and 
fled.  But  there  was  curiosity  in  her,  too,  as  well  as 
fear.  Curiosity  is  a  part  of  all  dread.  And  in  the 
end  she  stood  where  she  was  and  waited  and  watched. 

It  was  a  poor  room  she  looked  into,  clean  enough, 

but  shabby  and  rather  untidy.     There  was  an  iron 

[in] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

bed  against  the  wall,  and  a  washstand  in  one  corner 
—three  or  four  chairs,  and  a  kind  of  sofa  with  the 
hair  cloth  split  all  along  the  edge  of  the  seat  and 
gaping  open.  The  two  windows  were  raised,  and 
somewhere  down  below  in  the  back  areas  under  the 
clothes  lines  a  little  dog  was  barking  furiously,  and 
a  man  was  shouting  at  it  in  an  unknown  tongue. 

Hope's  eyes,  after  one  swift  glance  about  this  room, 
leaped  to  the  young  woman  who  had  risen  with  sewing 
in  her  hands  from  a  chair  by  the  window,  and  was 
kissing  Miss  Sprague  and  saying  how  good  it  was 
of  her  to  call;  a  rather  German  or  Russian  looking 
young  woman,  Hope  thought,  with  a  great  deal 
of  fair  hair  parted  at  one  side,  and  straight  fair 
brows  over  beautiful  long  eyes  set  very  far  apart, 
and  a  white,  heart-shaped  face.  She  must  have  been 
exceedingly  pretty  at  one  time,  a  striking  figure; 
but  she  looked  worn  and  tired  and  ill,  and,  when 
she  was  not  smiling  at  Miss  Sprague,  sullen  or 
gloomy,  or  perhaps  both. 

Miss  Sprague  called  her  "Olga,"  and  kissed  her  on 
both  cheeks  very  affectionately,  and  said  she  seemed 
much  better  than  the  last  time;  so  the  fair  young 
woman  must  have  been  ill.  Then  Miss  Sprague 
said: 

"My  dear,  I've  come  to  ask  for  your  help.  You 
said  once — long  ago — that  if  ever  the  time  came 
when  you  could  save  a  girl  from  what  you  had  had 
to  suffer  you'd  do  it  at  any  cost.  The  time  has  come 
now.  Will  you  do  what  you  promised?  Will  you 

[lie] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

tell  Miss  Green"  —  she  turned  her  head  and  re 
peated  that  name  in  a  louder  tone — "will  you  tell 
Miss  Green  about  him — about  Archie  Traill?" 

The  fair  young  woman  looked  hard  into  Miss 
Sprague's  face,  and  then  turned  toward  the  doorway. 
She  seemed  for  the  first  time  to  see  that  some  one 
stood  there  in  the  shadow.  She  took  a  step  forward, 
saying: 

"Come  in!  What  are  you  standing  out  there 
for?" 

She  spoke  English  very  readily,  but  with  the  faint 
est  of  alien  intonations. 

Hope  moved  slowly  a  step  or  two  into  the  light  of 
the  room,  and  when  the  other  woman  saw  her  she 
pressed  her  lips  together  in  an  odd,  round  opening, 
as  if  she  were  going  to  whistle,  but  she  didn't.  She 
regarded  her  visitor  from  head  to  foot  with  a  slow, 
incredulous  surprise. 

"  You  want  to  know  about  Archie  Traill?  You?" 
And  after  a  moment  she  added,  "Miss."  "Archie's 
flying  higher  than  he  used  to,"  she  said,  turning  her 
head  toward  Miss  Sprague. 

The  secretary  said,  briefly,  "Yes,  he  is." 

The  fair  young  woman  turned  her  eyes  back  upon 
Hope  in  a  hard  and  cold  interrogation. 

"How  old  are  you?"  she  asked,  abruptly. 

And  Hope  said,  "Eighteen,"  without  a  thought  of 
resentment.  She  had  become  apathetic  again. 

"That's  very  young!"  the  other  woman  com 
mented,  and  shook  her  head.  "Well — what  do  you 

[113] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

want  to  know?"  She  shrugged  her  shoulders  a  little 
helplessly  and  spread  out  her  two  hands.  "Here  I 
am  —  or,  rather,  here  we  are!  That's  the  answer, 
I  should  think.  Do  you  want  to  see  my  baby?" 

She  went  to  a  corner  beyond  the  bed  and  stood 
looking  down  upon  a  tiny  crib  where  a  baby  lay  on 
its  back  and  played  with  its  toes — a  very  good  baby, 
seemingly,  for  it  had  not  uttered  a  sound  until  its 
mother  came  near,  then  it  made  little  bubbly,  in 
articulate  noises  and  laughed  and  kicked  violently. 
It  had  dark  eyes  and  a  wisp  of  thin,  black  hair. 

"I  have  my  baby,"  the  fair  young  woman  said, 
looking  down  upon  that  possession  with  a  faint 
smile,  "and  I  take  in  fine  sewing.  We  scrape  along 
somehow,  baby  and  I.  Of  course,  it  wouldn't  do 
to  get  ill." 

"I  think  I  understand,"  Hope  said.  She  was  very 
white,  and  put  one  hand  out  against  the  wall  to  sup 
port  herself.  She  turned  reproachful  eyes  upon  Miss 
Sprague.  "Why  didn't  you  just  tell  me  that  Mr. 
Traill  was  married?  I'd  have  believed  you.  Why 
did  you  bring  me  all  this  long  way?" 

Miss  Sprague  cried,  in  a  low  voice,  "Oh,  my  dear, 
my  poor  dear!" 

But  the  fan*  young  woman  came  back  from  her 
baby's  crib  and  stood  beside  the  bed  staring  across 
it  with  wide  open  eyes. 

"Married?"  she  demanded,  in  a  tone  of  great 
bewilderment.  "Me  married — to  Archie  Traill? 
You  must  be  crazy."  She  glanced  swiftly  toward 

[114] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Miss  Sprague  and  back  again.  "Great  Heavens! 
[she  said  Hafens]  hasn't  he  talked  his  Freedom  to 
you,  then?  What  has  come  to  him?" 

Hope  met  her  eyes  and  gave  a  sudden,  bitter  cry. 

"He  was  never  married  to  you — and  after  all  this 
he  has  deserted  you — left  you  to  starve  or  die — 
and  his  child?  Oh,  it's  impossible.  People  don't 
do  such  things.  It's  too  horrible.  I  don't  believe 
it." 

"But  why  not?"  said  the  fair  young  woman, 
once  more  spreading  out  her  hands.  "Why  not? 
That's  Freedom.  He's  free,  Archie  is.  He's  told 
you  about  it?  No?  Marriage  is — is — oh,  I  forget. 
It's  a  long  time  since  I  heard  all  that.  You're 
newer  than  I  am;  you  know." 

Hope  stared  with  haggard  eyes  at  this  incredible, 
this  fantastic  yellow-haired  woman.  Everything 
else  but  the  woman's  face  seemed  to  her  to  have 
turned  black,  and  she  felt  physically  sick.  She  felt 
as  if  she  were  strangling. 

"Is  this  what  Freedom  means?"  she  asked,  in 
a  painful  whisper;  and  the  other  woman  gave  a 
brief  bitter  laugh  and  answered: 

"But  yes!  Of  course.  What  did  you  expect? 
Oh,  I  know—  She  made  a  little  gesture.  "He 
talks.  He  says  you'll  be  free,  too.  He  and  you 
together.  Showing  the  world  how  to  live.  That's 
it!  I  remember  now.  He  doesn't  say  anything 
about  how  long  it's  to  go  on.  Of  course  not.  You 
wouldn't  go  with  him  if  he  said,  'When  I'm  tired  of 

[1151 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

you  I  walk  out  of  the  house  and  leave  you  to  shift 
for  yourself.'  No,  indeed!  That  would  spoil  every 
thing.  You're  to  understand  that  without  being 
told.  And  you're  not  to  complain,  nor  lie  awake 
at  night  shivering  about  what's  to  come,  nor  curse 
God,  nor  cut  your  throat,  because  it's  all  just  a  part 
of  Freedom.  He's  free,  and  you're  free,  too."  She 
laughed  again,  rather  dreadfully.  "I'm  free.  Look 
at  me!  Don't  you  see  how  free  I  am?" 

Hope,  with  her  hands  over  her  face,  gave  a  shud 
dering  cry,  and  Miss  Sprague  ran  to  her  and  put 
her  arms  about  the  girl's  shoulders.  There  were 
tears  upon  the  secretary's  cheeks. 

"Oh,  my  dear!  My  dear!"  she  said.  "But 
you  had  to  know.  You  just  had  to." 

"Take  me  away!"  Hope  begged  of  her.  "I  want 
to  go  home." 

And  Miss  Sprague  said:  "Yes,  child,  I  will." 

But  the  other  woman  came  round  the  bed  and 
touched  the  girl  upon  the  arm  so  that  she  looked  up. 

"How — far  had  you  got  with  him?"  the  woman 
asked. 

Hope  stared  at  her  with  blank  eyes. 

"How  far?     I  don't  understand." 

And  at  that  the  woman  nodded  heartily,  almost 
smiling,  and  said: 

"That's  all  right,  then.     I  didn't  know." 

Hope  felt  dimly,  and  from  a  great  way  off,  that 
there  were  many  things  still  to  be  said — explanations, 
apologies,  thanks.  But  she  was  incapable  of  further 

H16J 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

speech  just  then,  and  she  was  shivering  so  violently 
that  it  was  hard  to  stand,  and  she  was  afraid  she 
might  faint,  and  make  a  scene. 

"Take  me  away!"  she  begged  again,  in  a  whisper, 
and  again  the  secretary  said: 

"Yes.     Yes;  I  will!" 

Hope  heard  the  other  two  speaking  together 
briefly,  and  afterward  she  thought  she  must  have 
said  something  herself,  and  she  had  a  half  memory 
of  taking  that  yellow-haired  woman's  hands,  and, 
upon  a  sudden  impulse,  of  bending  over  and  kissing 
her  cheek,  which  seemed  to  surprise  and  touch 
the  woman.  But  she  wasn't  quite  sure  of  all  this. 
It  mightn't  be  so. 

Then,  though  she  didn't  at  all  remember  going 
down  the  stairs,  she  and  Miss  Sprague  were  once 
more  in  the  hansom,  and  moving  swiftly  through 
the  streets. 

She  spoke  twice  on  the  way  home. 

"Hadn't  she — that  woman — any  family  to  pro 
tect  her,  and  to  take  her  back — afterward?" 

"Only  a  mother  and  a  sister,"  Miss  Sprague  said. 
"No  men.  The  mother  died  and  the  young  sister — 
well,  nobody  knows  where  the  sister  is.  That's 
one  of  the  worst  things  poor  Olga  has  to  face — the 
thought  that  perhaps  her  example  led  her  sister  to  do 
something  she  mightn't  have  done  otherwise." 

Then,  after  a  silence,  Hope  asked: 

"Is  this — Olga  the  only  one  he  has  taken  away, 
or  have  there  been  others?" 

[117] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"Olga  isn't  the  only  one,"  Miss  Sprague  said. 

The  girl  said,  "Oh!"  and  turned  her  face  aside. 

In  Fortieth  Street  she  went  at  once  to  her  own 
room — her  feet  stumbled  and  would  hardly  move — 
shut  the  door  after  her,  and  locked  it. 

Almost  the  first  thing  her  eyes  fell  upon  was 
Traill's  thick  letter  lying  on  her  dressing-table  un 
opened.  In  her  haste  to  get  away  she  had  never 
read  it.  She  tore  it  across  twice  and  threw  it  into 
the  waste-paper  basket.  Then  she  fished  out  the 
pieces  and  tore  them  to  the  smallest  bits  lest  any 
whole  word  be  left.  And  afterward  she  lay  down 
upon  her  bed  and  gave  way  to  a  passion  of  weeping, 
a  bitter  fury  of  tears,  a  veritable  tempest  that  shook 
her  from  head  to  foot. 

It  may  have  been  an  hour  later  that  there  came  a 
sharp  rapping  at  the  door.  Hope,  after  a  moment's 
hesitation,  got  up,  crossed  the  room,  and  shot  back 
the  bolt.  It  was  Miss  King.  Her  face  was  flushed 
with  some  emotion,  and  her  bright  blue  eyes  were 
brighter  than  ever.  She  shut  the  door  behind  her, 
and  took  the  girl  in  her  arms.  She  was  trembling  a 
little.  She  said: 

"Oh,  my  poor  dear  child!  I'm  so  sorry.  I'm 
in  such  an  agony  of  sorrow.  I  feel  as  if  it  was  all  my 
fault.  I  got  you  down  here,  and  then  went  about  my 
own  wretched  affairs  and  left  you  alone.  Yes,  it's 
every  bit  my  fault,  and  I  shall  never  forgive  my 
self." 

"There's  nothing  to  forgive,"  Hope  said,  wearily. 

[118] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Her  tears  were  over.  "It's  nobody's  fault,  unless 
it's  my  own.  It  just  happened." 

Miss  King's  self-possession  had  deserted  her  for 
the  first  time  in  many  years,  and  she  referred  to  young 
Mr.  Traill  in  violent  terms.  She  made  wild  and 
preposterous  threats  against  him  that  she  couldn't 
possibly  have  carried  into  action.  She  even  wept 
a  little  for  anger  and  humiliation  and  self-abase 
ment. 

Hope  heard  her  through,  or  seemed  to,  in  silence, 
but  at  the  end  she  said: 

"Aunt  Alice,  I  want  to  go  home!  I  want  to  go 
home  now,  at  once,  to-day.  You'll  understand, 
won't  you?  You  won't  be  hurt,  or  anything?  But 
I  couldn't  bear  staying  in  New  York  any  longer. 
I  want  to  go  home  to  my  mother." 

In  a  sudden  vivid  picture  she  saw  herself  beset 
by  perils  and  terrors.  The  vast  clangor  of  the  city 
seemed  to  threaten  her  as  if  it  were  a  prodigious  car 
of  Juggernaut  towering  over  her  body.  Traill's  face 
leered  at  her  from  a  cloud  of  darkness.  She  saw 
herself  at  Miss  King's  luncheon  table,  and  all  those 
pleasant,  genial,  argumentative  folk  sat  about  her 
with  devil's  faces  and  gloated  over  a  word  called 
Freedom — a  word  of  hideous  import.  They  tossed  it 
back  and  forth  among  them,  staring  greedily  at  her. 
They  said:  "You  must  be  free.  That's  what  we 
want.  We  want  you  to  be  free.  All  women  must 
be  free  just  like  that  Olga  of  Traill's.  Don't  you  see 
how  splendid  Freedom  is?"  They  laughed  and 

[119] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

snarled  and  yammered  about  her,  the  whole  pack  of 
them,  screaming  that  awful  word,  and  it  seemed  to 
her  that  she  ran  here  and  there  like  a  rat  trying  to 
escape  them.  But  there  was  no  escape. 

Yes,  one.  There  was  home.  There  was  the  sim 
ple  quiet  existence  that  she  had  thought  so  dull.  It 
looked  as  beautiful  to  her  as  green  fields  to  a  tempest- 
tossed  mariner — as  beautiful  as  sunshine  after  storm 
— as  evening  and  the  evening  bells  to  a  returning 
wanderer.  It  was  a  long  time  since  she  had  been 
encouraged  to  go  to  her  mother  with  her  small  diffi 
culties  and  joys  and  sorrows.  There  hadn't  been 
much  intimacy  between  them,  but  that  silent  austere 
presence  seemed  all  at  once  to  her  everything  there 
is  of  peace  and  love  and  tenderness  and  sanctuary. 
She  longed  and  ached  to  hide  her  head  in  her  mother's 
lap. 

It  stumbled  into  words,  a  good  deal  of  this,  broken 
and  hysterical  words  interspersed  with  sobs  and 
tears — a  preposterous  and  pathetic  kaleidoscope  of 
misunderstandings,  terrors,  accusations.  Miss  King 
was  appalled. 

"Great  Heavens,  child!  Are  you  trying  to  mix 
that  wretch's  poisonous  anarchism  with  the  Suffrage 
movement?  You  must  be  insane.  Why — oh,  I 
can't  find  words!  It's  the  maddest  thing  I  ever 
heard  of.  You  don't  know  what  you're  saying." 

"It's  all  a  horror  to  me!"  the  girl  cried.  "The 
whole  thing.  Why  can't  you  let  women  alone? 
They're  happy  enough.  Let  them  alone  in  their 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

own  homes  and  their  own  lives.  You  drag  them  out 
— and  tell  them  they  must  be  free — and  then  men 
like — like  that  come  along.  Oh,  I  don't  want  to  talk 
about  it!  It's  a  nightmare.  I  never  want  to  hear 
anything  about  suffrage,  or  woman's  rights,  or  free 
dom  again  as  long  as  I  live.  I  want  to  go  home. 
My  mother  would  have  warned  me  against  all  this 
if  she'd  known.  She  knew.  She  didn't  let  you 
talk  about  it  before  me  for  years.  I  want  to  go 
home  to  my  mother!  Aunt  Alice,  please  let  me 
go!" 

There  was  no  use  arguing  against  this  sort  of 
thing.  It  was  sheer  hysteria.  Miss  King  must  have 
known  and  accepted  that,  but  still  she  said,  and 
there  was  a  new,  hurried  note  in  her  voice: 

"No,  child.  Not  just  now.  Wait  a  few  days — a 
week!  You  mustn't  go  now." 

And  in  response  to  that  new  quality  in  her  tone 
Hope  raised  her  head  suddenly  and  stared  into  the 
elder  woman's  face. 

"Why  not  now?  What  do  you  mean?"  She 
began  to  look  frightened.  "Is  there  anything 
wrong  at  home?  Why  shouldn't  I  go  there?  My 
mother — Aunt  Alice,  is  my  mother  ill?  Please  tell 
me  the  truth!  I'm  not  a  child.  Is  she  ill?" 

"She's  not  very  well,  my  dear,"  said  Miss  King, 
slowly.  "You  see —  No;  she's  not  quite  as  well  as 
one  would  like.  You  mustn't  be  frightened.  It  will 
all  come  out  right,  I'm  sure.  Oh  yes,  quite  sure! 
Still—" 

[121] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

Hope  held  her  godmother  suddenly  out  at  arm's 
length. 

"Have  I  got  to  tell  you  twice  that  I'm  not  a 
child?  What  is  it  that's  the  matter?" 

And  Miss  King  said,  gently:  "It's  what  we  all 
stand  in  fear  of  when  we're  past  middle  age.  At 
least,  that's  what  your  mother  thinks  it  may  be. 
I'm  hoping  it's  much  less  serious — not  malignant, 
you  know.  We  shall  find  out  in  two  or  three  days." 

"You  mean  she's  to  be — operated  upon  in  two 
or  three  days?" 

And  Miss  King  said,  reluctantly:  "Yes.  Yes! 
she  has  been  preparing  for  it.  She  didn't  want  you 
there,  for  your  own  sake.  She  didn't  want  you  to 
know  until  it  was  over  with.  She  said  it  was  no 
experience  for  a  young  girl  to  pass  through — the — 
the  suspense  and  the  fear  and  dread  and  all.  She 
wanted  to  spare  you." 

Hope  gave  a  single  dry  sob. 

"How  long  has  my  mother  been  suffering  from 
this?" 

"Oh,  a  long  time.  More  than  a  year.  Two 
years,  perhaps.  She's  not  very  demonstrative. 
You'd  never  have  guessed." 

"No,"  said  the  girl,  in  a  low  voice.  "She's  not 
demonstrative.  Can  you  let  me  have  Celia  to  help 
pack  my  things?  I  must  get  away  this  afternoon. 
There's  a  good  train  at  four,  I  think." 

Miss  King  would  have  liked  to  protest.  She 
opened  her  mouth  to,  but  Hope  had  already  turned 

[122] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

away  from  her  and  was  going  toward  the  closet 
where  her  frocks  were  hung. 

And  there  was  a  kind  of  still  determination  about 
the  very  look  of  her  back.  Something,  Miss  King 
thought,  oddly  reminiscent  of  the  girl's  mother. 

She  sighed  and  shook  her  head. 

"I'll  go  to  New  Haven  with  you,"  she  said,  and 
rang  for  her  maid. 


CHAPTER  IX 

TWO  days  after  Hope's  return  to  New  Haven 
her  mother  was  operated  upon  for  the  excision 
of  a  cancerous  growth.  A  not  altogether  unexpected 
weakness  of  the  heart  manifested  itself  during  the 
course  of  the  operation,  and  she  died  without  re 
covering  consciousness. 

It  was  the  removal  from  the  girl's  life  of  a  gentle 
stranger,  a  silent,  kindly,  austere  coinhabitant  of  the 
big  house  in  Hillhouse  Avenue — not  much  more;  but 
it  left  her  exceedingly  alone  in  the  world. 

Miss  King  was  there,  of  course,  and  George  and 
Caroline  Darnley,  summoned  by  telegraph,  arrived 
the  morning  following  Mrs.  Standish's  death,  and 
remained  for  the  funeral,  after  which  they  carried 
Hope  back  to  the  city  with  them. 

She  had  somehow  been  sure  of  a  fatal  outcome 
from  the  first  glance  at  her  mother's  face  upon  her 
hurried  return  home.  Mrs.  Standish  had  so  terribly 
altered  in  that  brief  fortnight.  A  peculiar  trans 
parent  fragility  had  come  upon  her,  a  hollow-eyed 
and  deathly  look.  Perhaps  she  had  broken  at  last 
under  the  terrible  continuity  of  pain.  Or  perhaps 
she  had  had  some  inner  warning  of  a  near  end. 

11241 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

People  often  have — though  as  often  as  not  they 
are  wrong  about  it.  She  had  the  look  of  one  already 
upon  the  threshold  of  that  last  door,  and  even  her 
thoughts  seemed  to  be  in  the  shadows  beyond  it, 
for  she  betrayed  no  more  than  a  mild  interest  in  her 
daughter's  return.  She  said,  lying  upon  a  couch 
in  her  room: 

"Ah,  my  child!     You  are  back?     I  thought — ' 
And  never  expressed  what  she  thought,  for  her  mind 
seemed  to  wander  a  little. 

Hope  sat  beside  her  alone  in  the  dusk  for  an  hour 
or  more. 

Their  relations  had  been  peculiar — peculiar,  at 
least,  in  this  day,  for  Mrs.  Standish  was  a  survival 
from  another  era  when  the  parent  was  Law  and 
Authority  made  visible,  and  when  friendship  or  in 
timacy  between  parent  and  child  was  not  held  in 
esteem.  We  are  doing  away  with  that  creed  now, 
thank  God !  but  there  are  remnants  of  it  still  among 
us.  It  is  not  yet  extirpated — not  by  a  good  deal. 

Perhaps  if  her  one  child  had  come  to  her  earlier 
in  life  it  might  have  been  different,  but  she  gave  birth 
in  her  fortieth  year — a  middle-aged  woman,  prim, 
austere,  accustomed  to  the  concealment  of  her  emo 
tions.  Hope's  father  had  had  the  soul  of  a  poet, 
and  the  shortcomings  which  sometimes  go  with  that 
species  of  soul.  Perhaps  his  brief  tumultuous  career 
may  have  had  something  to  do  with  his  wife's  early 
congealment.  Who  knows? 

In  any  case,  Hope's  spiritual  life  had  been  a  lonely 

[125] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

one.  The  million  questions  that  her  little  groping 
mind  was  forever  manufacturing  before  the  puzzle 
of  existence  went  unanswered  because  she  wouldn't 
have  dreamed  of  laying  them  upon  the  spare  black- 
clad  knees  of  that  rather  awesome  presence.  The 
little  tendernesses,  the  ecstatic  cuddlings,  the  sooth 
ing  of  hurts,  the  explanation  of  why  the  wicked 
window  should  fall  on  her  small  fingers — all  these,  or 
most  of  them,  had  been  omitted  from  the  Standish 
curriculum.  For  close  intimacy  and  instinctive 
confidence  had  been  substituted  a  chaste  and 
temperate  affection,  infinite  respect,  and  some  awe. 

"It's  almost  as  if  the  child  had  been  brought  up 
in  the  care  of  an  elderly  maiden  aunt,"  Mrs.  Darnley 
said  once  to  Miss  Alice  King.  "I  suppose  you 
know  there  are  a  good  many  maiden-aunt  mothers 
in  this  world.  It's  all  wrong,  somehow.  Unmaternal 
people  like  that  oughn't  to  have  children;  or,  if 
they  have  them,  the  children  ought  to  be  turned  over 
to  some  of  these  women  who  are  always  wishing 
they  could  mother  the  whole  race.  I  know  one  like 
that — Nora  Cartwright — and  she  hasn't  a  child  to 
her  name — poor  starved  dear !  It's  a  wicked  shame." 

Still,  maiden-auntlike  or  not,  her  mother  was  her 
mother  to  Hope,  and  stood  for  something  dear  and 
accustomed  and  familiar,  just  as  her  home — not  the 
gayest  nor  most  amusing  of  places — stood  for  shelter 
and  peace. 

So,  in  the  height  of  her  need,  shaken  to  the  very 
depths  of  her  being,  torn  in  every  fiber  by  shock 

[126] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

and  pain  and  disgust,  and  something  very  like 
physical  sickness,  she  turned  instinctively  to  these. 
And  so  in  the  height  of  her  need  they  failed  her. 

That  is  a  common  enough  experience — as  common 
as  pain — but  it  is  hard. 

In  the  morning  of  the  day  on  which  her  mother 
was  to  undergo  the  operation  Hope  was  told  that  a 
gentleman  insisted  upon  seeing  her  if  only  for  a 
moment — a  Mr.  Lee.  She  couldn't  remember  that 
she  or  her  mother  knew  any  Mr.  Lee,  but  went  down 
to  the  drawing-room,  and  there  nearly  cried  out,  for 
the  gentleman  was  Traill,  rather  white  and  haggard, 
but  exceedingly  determined.  She  had  written  him  a 
half-dozen  sentences  before  leaving  New  York  and  had 
crossed  him,  so  she  thought,  out  of  her  life  forever. 

"I've  come  from  the  city,"  he  said.  "I  had  to 
see  you." 

Hope,  standing  by  the  doorway,  regarded  him 
across  the  room  with  a  face  that  should  have  stabbed 
the  man,  and  perhaps  did.  She  said: 

"My  mother  is  very  ill.  She's  to  be  operated 
upon  to-day,  and  she  may  not — come  through  it. 
It's  hardly  a  time  to  chat.  Besides,  I  have  nothing 
to  say  to  you  either  now  or  ever.  Nothing!" 
Her  voice  shook  and  rose  at  him  suddenly  in  almost 
a  cry.  "How  dare  you  come  here  and  face  me, 
after  what  I've  found  out?  How  dare  you?" 

"How  dare  you  judge  me  the  way  you've  done?" 
said  the  anarchist.  "Who  are  you,  to  make  judg 
ments?  Are  you  God?" 

[127] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

It  wasn't  easy  to  manufacture  a  fitting  retort  to 
that,  and  after  a  moment  she  gave  it  up.  She  said: 

"I  must  ask  you  to  go  away.  I  have  no  time  to 
talk,  and  no  inclination,  either.  It's  not  easy  for  me 
to  speak  civilly  to  you.  It's  not  easy  to  speak  to 
you  at  all.  I — oh,  I  believed  in  you  so!  I  thought 
you  were  so  splendid.  You  and  your  Freedom! 
Now  it  makes  me  shiver  just  to  think  of  that  hideous 
word.  I  can't  imagine,"  she  said,  looking  at  him  as 
if  he  were  something  very  mean  and  vile — "I  can't 
imagine  why  such  people  as  you  are  allowed  to  go 
about  the  world.  Why  aren't  you  in  prison?  It 
seems  to  me  that  you  are  much  more  dangerous  than 
most  other  kinds  of  criminals.  Why  should  they 
be  locked  up  and  you  left  free?" 

She  reached  home  on  him  there,  for  he  flushed  a 
dark,  angry  red,  but  he  kept  his  temper  after  a 
fashion. 

"Ah!  I  see  you  are  God." 

Hope  shook  her  head. 

"That's  no  good  now.  Large  words  don't  im 
press  me  as  they  used  to.  You'll  have  to  find  some 
body  else  for  that — somebody  with  no  one  to  look 
after  her  and  warn  her — like  the  poor  girl  I  saw  the 
other  day.  You  made  one  little  mistake  about  me. 
I  was — what's  the  word?  Oh,  credulous.  Yes; 
I  was  credulous  enough.  I  was  ready  to  believe 
anything,  but  I  wasn't  quite  unprotected." 

"Free  people  don't  need  protection,"  said  Traill; 
and  Hope  gave  a  little  angry  laugh. 

1128] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"You're  still  using  that  magnificent  word?  You're 
still  shamming?" 

"I'm  still  talking  about  Freedom,  if  that  is  what 
you  mean,"  he  said,  stubbornly.  "I  shall  talk 
about  it  until  I  die,  for  it's  the  only  thing  worth 
talking  about." 

Hope  looked  across  at  him  with  a  kind  of  cold 
curiosity. 

"It  wasn't  Freedom  you  wanted  of  me.  You'd 
got  ambitious.  You  wanted  to  know  a  certain 
kind  of  people,  and  you  couldn't  manage  it  alone,  so 
you  wanted  me  to  help.  I  suppose  you  thought 
I  might  have  a  good  deal  of  money,  too,  didn't  you? 
So  you  were  going  to  trade  your  precious  Freedom 
for  a  good  marriage." 

"Marriage!"  cried  the  man.  He  turned  quite 
white  with  a  wild  and  extraordinary  fury.  He 
shook  his  fists  in  the  air. 

"Marriage?  My  God!  Have  you  been  stone  deaf 
all  through  this  past  fortnight?  Marriage?  You 
actually  thought  I  wanted  to  marry  you?  What  in 
— why  in  the  devil's  name  did  you  think  I'd  wasted 
all  that  breath  if  I  meant  to  turn  about  and  marry? 
Can  you  women  think  of  anything  else  in  the  world 
but  that  beastly  relic  of  medieval  barbarism?  Do 
you  eat,  drink,  and  sleep  marriage?  Is  there  no 
other  word  in  the  dictionary,  no  other  fact  in  the 
universe,  that  you  must  be  eternally  obsessed  by 
that  one  particular  form  of  degradation? 

"Marry  you?    I  wouldn't  marry  you  or  any  other 

[129] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

woman  if  it  was  to  save  me  from  being  burnt  alive. 
I  wouldn't  marry  you  if  it  was  the  only  way  of  pre 
serving  the  world  from  damnation.  What  kind  of 
renegade,  traitorous  turncoat  do  you  think  I  am, 
anyhow?" 

He  broke  off  his  astonishing  flow  of  language  with 
some  abruptness,  and  stared  at  Hope  across  the 
room,  biting  his  lips. 

"That's  no  idea  of  yours.  We've  talked  too 
often  and  too  long  on  the  subject.  You  know  how 
I  feel  about  it.  You  felt  with  me.  Somebody  has 
been  at  you — putting  ideas  into  your  head.  .  .  . 
Oh,  well!" 

Hope  tried  to  say  that  it  didn't  much  matter 
where  the  ideas  came  from  so  long  as  they  had 
come  in  time.  Her  lips  moved  in  the  words,  but  it 
is  doubtful  if  they  made  any  sound,  for  she  was  in  a 
state  of  stupefaction — half  stunned  with  surprise. 
This  incredible,  this  preposterous  young  man  was  in 
deadly  earnest.  He  had  been  perfectly  sincere  from 
first  to  last.  He  literally  believed  in  his  outrageous 
doctrines.  It  was  impossible  not  to  see  that  he 
was  sincere  and  in  a  towering  rage  over  the  insult 
that  had  been  dealt  him.  He  all  but  danced — a 
grotesquely  infuriated  figure  in  the  middle  of  that 
decorous  drawing-room. 

Upon  the  paralysis  of  astonishment  in  Hope's 
mind  there  supervened  a  kind  of  cold  and  bitter 
anger. 

"If  you  really  mean  what  you  say,"  she  began, 

[180J 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"it  seems  to  me  a  hundred  times  worse  than  what 
I  had  believed.  It  was  bad  enough  to  come  to  me 
from  that  girl  you  had  wronged  so  terribly,  and 
from  others  like  her,  and  to  want  to  marry  me. 
But  to  think  of  treating  me  as  you  treated  them — " 

"Wait!"  Traill  said,  coming  forward  toward  her. 
"Wait  a  minute!  You  don't  understand.  I  can't 
think  why,  but  you  still  don't  understand.  That 
girl — well,  those  girls,  if  you  want  exactness — knew 
what  they  were  doing.  I  talked  to  them  the  way 
I  talked  to  you.  They  knew  that  when  I  said 
Freedom  I  meant  it;  that  being  bound  fast  for  a 
whole  life  to  any  one  person  was  degrading  and 
intolerable.  They  came  to  me  of  their  own  free 
will.  They  were  free  to  leave  me  at  any  moment, 
as  I  was  free  to  leave  them.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
one  of  them  did  leave  me,  and  I  made  no  effort 
to  hold  her  back.  In  Freedom,  just  as  in  slavery, 
some  one  is  bound  to  get  under  the  wheels  now  and 
then  and  be  hurt.  /  can't  help  that.  It's  luck; 
it's  chance.  I  won't  go  on  living  with  anybody 
I  have  ceased  to  love,  because  I  believe  it  to  be 
wicked  and  vile.  I  wouldn't  have  anybody  go  on 
living  with  me  if  she'd  stopped  wanting  to.  Freedom 
is  Freedom,  and  if  a  human  soul  is  to  develop  to  its 
highest  it  must  be  free.  That's  all." 

"Yes,"  Hope  said.  "That  is  all.  And  it's 
enough.  You've  said  it  all  before,  of  course.  I 
recognize  the  sound  of  it.  Only — I  didn't  know 
then,  as  I  know  now,  what  it  really  meant  to  human 

[131] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

lives.  I  didn't  know  about  the  wreck  and  the  suf 
fering  and  the  anguish  that  free  people  \ike  you  leave 
behind  them.  I've  often  heard  of  whited  sepulchers, 
but  now  I  know  what  they  are — what  cruel  and 
hideous  things  can  be  hidden  under  fine-sounding 
words.  ...  It  makes  me  shiver  just  to  see  you. 
Will  you  please  go  away?" 

"I  love  you!"  the  man  said,  suddenly,  in  a 
broken  voice,  and  put  his  hands  up  over  his 
face. 

It  was  the  second  surprise  he  had  furnished  on 
this  eventful  morning.  He/was  an  astonishing  young 
man.  He  seemed  incapable  of  behaving  as  he  might 
be  expected  to  behave.  He  stood  there  in  an  awk 
ward,  ungainly  attitude,  his  face  hidden,  his  shoul 
ders  moving  spasmodically  —  a  grotesque  figure 
abandoned  to  woe.  The  hat  he  had  brought 
into  the  room  with  him  lay  at  his  feet  on  the 
floor. 

Perhaps  at  another  time  this  abrupt  breaking 
down  of  strength  and  bombast,  this  reductio  ad 
dolor  em,  might  have  softened  the  girl  at  least  to 
some  manifestation  of  pity.  But  just  now  it  left 
her  hard  and  cold.  She  could  see  only  that  shabby 
room  in  a  mean  street,  and  the  woman  who  took  in 
sewing  to  support  herself  and  her  child.  She  watched 
for  a  moment  with  hostile  eyes  the  bent,  unheroic 
figure,  taking  a  little  consciously  her  leave  of  him, 
shaking,  as  it  were,  the  dust  of  her  feet  off  on  Mr. 
Traill.  Then  she  turned  and  went  upstairs. 

[132] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

And  presently,  standing  behind  the  window  cur 
tains  of  her  own  room,  she  saw  him  leave  the  house 
and  make  off  down  Hillhouse  Avenue.  Once  he 
paused  to  look  back,  then  pulled  his  hat  lower  over 
his  eyes  and  went  on  his  way. 


CHAPTER  X 

EARLY  in  June  Hope  went  abroad  with  the 
Darnleys.  There  had  been  a  good  deal  of 
discussion  over  it,  and  when  the  plan  was  first  pro 
posed  she  refused  their  invitation  altogether,  on 
the  ground  that  a  young  woman  in  mourning  would 
be  a  nuisance  and  a  skeleton.  But  they  assured  her 
that  they  didn't  mean  to  go  out  much  or  to  enter 
tain,  or  to  be  especially  gay  in  any  fashion;  and 
George  Darnley,  who  was  very  fond  of  her,  said  her 
presence  would  hold  Caroline  down,  and  save  him 
many  a  midnight  hour  of  sleep.  So  in  the  end  she 
gave  in,  as  she  had  been  longing  to  do  from  the  start. 
There  were  alternatives,  to  be  sure.  The  Goffes 
and  the  Hitchcocks,  and  several  other  families  had 
begged  her  to  come  with  them  to  their  quiet  summer 
retreats,  and  Miss  King's  house  at  Bar  Harbor 
would  be  open,  though  its  mistress  might  be  away 
a  good  deal.  But  Hope  was  sad  and  restless,  and 
wanted  as  complete  a  change  as  could  possibly  be 
obtained. 

As  for  later  plans,  she  hadn't  begun  to  think  about 
them  at  all.  They  could  wait.  She  would  be  able 
to  do  very  much  what  she  chose,  and  live  where  she 

[134] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

liked,  for  all  her  father's  estate  reverted  to  her, 
now  that  her  mother  was  gone;  and,  while  it  was  by 
no  means  a  great  fortune,  as  fortunes  go  nowadays, 
it  was  enough  to  keep  on  the  house  in  New  Haven, 
and  to  yield  a  very  liberal  income  besides. 

She  surprised  Miss  King  and  the  Darnleys  by 
exhibiting  what  seemed  to  them  a  rather  extra 
ordinary  clearness  of  mind  in  her  grasp  of  the 
necessary  business  details  that  the  occasion  forced 
upon  her. 

"That  girl's  got  the  brains  of  a  man!"  George 
Darnley  said.  "To  hear  her  go  on  with  old  Banks 
[the  family  lawyer],  you  might  think  she'd  been  man 
aging  estates  for  years.  She's  top  hole,  that  girl  is!" 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  was  the  most  fulsome 
flattery,  and  Hope  showed  no  more  natural  aptitude 
for  affairs  than  might  have  been  expected  of  any  one 
else  of  her  age  and  intelligence.  She  was  not  an 
extraordinary  girl  at  all,  except  for  her  great  beauty. 
She  was  very  much  like  other  girls  in  her  walk  of 
life.  Most  young  women  of  her  age  and  race  have 
active  and  acquisitive  minds,  which  have  been  half 
stifled  in  bad  schools.  Most  of  them  are  eager  and 
impulsive,  and  act  quite  blindly  on  their  impulses  if 
circumstances  permit  it.  Even  the  two  severe 
blows  which  had  come  almost  together  to  Hope 
Standish,  to  cut  her  definitely  off  from  childhood, 
and  to  open  her  eyes  to  certain  important  primary 
truths,  were  commonplace  blows,  though  the  ex 
terior  of  one  of  them  had  a  peculiar  pattern. 

[135] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

In  all  essentials  there  were  thousands  of  her  in 
the  land ;  and  if  her  friends  and  relatives  admiringly 
considered  her  clever  at  understanding  the  pro 
visions  of  a  will,  that  was  fondness  and  favoritism, 
and  a  mild  astonishment  at  perceiving  that  one  who 
was  but  yesterday  a  child  had  all  at  once  grown  to 
the  stature  of  a  young  woman. 

Miss  King,  who  had  come  down  to  the  pier  to  see 
the  travelers  off,  took  Hope  aside,  and  walked  a  lit 
tle  way  down  the  deck  with  her.  She  said: 

"My  dear,  I  haven't  talked  much  about  that 
wretched  business  of  a  fortnight  back.  There's  been 
too  much  else  to  think  of.  But  I  haven't  forgotten 
it,  and  you  haven't  either.  I  just  want  to  say  this: 
don't  let  an  unprincipled  scoundrel  prejudice  you 
unfairly  against  the  great  work  I  and  my  friends 
and  thousands  of  others  are  trying  to  do  for  the 
women  of  this  country.  The  things  we  stand  for, 
and  the  things  that  man  stands  for,  are  so  different 
and  so  opposed  that  I  can't  find  any  words  to  ex 
press  it  strongly  enough.  You'll  see  that  yourself 
later  on,  but  I  wish  you  might  begin  to  see  it  now. 
This  work  is  all  my  life  to  me,  you  know.  I  hate 
to  have  my  goddaughter — the  nearest  to  a  daughter 
I  shall  ever  possess — thinking  grotesque  and  dread 
ful  things  about  it." 

Hope  kissed  the  good  lady's  cheeks,  though  with 
the  slightest  hint  of  restraint  that  Miss  King  may 
well  have  been  aware  of. 

"I  couldn't  think  dreadful  things  about  anything 

[136] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

you  care  for,  Aunt  Alice.  It's  just — that  I've  seen 
what  things  can  happen  from  women  getting  ideas 
about  being  free.  Home  and  safety  and  shelter  seem 
to  me  just  now  to  be  the  important  things.  The 
things  outside  make  me  shiver  a  little." 

And  Miss  King  nodded  her  gray  head,  and  the 
light  gleamed  and  glinted  across  the  big,  round 
spectacles. 

fAll  right.  That's  all  right.  But  just  you  try 
thinking  now,  and  then  for  a  change,  of  the  millions 
of  young  women  who  have  no  homes — worth  calling 
homes — and  who  have  no  safety  and  no  shelter. 
And  just  you  remember  that  the  chief  thing  we 
Suffrage  workers  are  concerned  with  is  to  give  those 
very  women  the  safety  and  the  shelter  they  haven't 
got!"J 

"Oh!"  Hope  said,  rather  blankly.  "Yes;  to  be 
sure.  I'd  forgotten  that." 

It  occurred  to  her  that  perhaps  she  had  been  a 
little  unjust  to  Aunt  Alice,  and  she  made  a  sort  of 
mental  note  to  take  the  matter  out,  later  on,  at 
leisure,  and  have  a  careful  look  at  it.  Meanwhile, 
it  was  too  painful.  The  whole  subject  gave  her 
gooseflesh  just  to  think  of,  and  she  put  it  aside  with 
some  haste.  But  she  bade  Miss  King  a  very  affec 
tionate  farewell,  and,  as  the  ship  drew  out  into  the 
river,  stood  beside  the  rail  waving  her  handkerchief  at 
the  flat,  grim,  gray  figure  with  the  big,  round 
spectacles.  And  Miss  King  waved  her  decent  black 
sunshade  in  return,  and  nodded,  and  once  astonished 

[137] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

herself  by  wiping  away  a  tear,  and  then,  after  a  few 
minutes,  turned  away  toward  Fortieth  Street,  be 
cause  it  was  childish  and  sentimental  to  stand  for 
ever  watching  the  retreat  of  an  indistinguishable 
speck  upon  a  distant  ship,  when  the  world's  work 
was  waiting  to  be  done. 

It  happened  rather  oddly  that  Hope  came  to  a 
more  tolerant  view  of  The  Cause  (one  falls  with  a 
sort  of  humorous  inevitableness  into  Miss  King's 
capitals)  less  by  a  process  of  deliberation  than 
through  the  antipathetic  violence  of  Caroline  Darn- 
ley.  I  call  it  odd,  because  that  is  the  way  in  which 
stubborn  minds  so  often  work,  and  Hope  wasn't 
particularly  stubborn. 

She  told  Mrs.  Darnley,  one  day  during  the  voyage, 
something  of  her  painful  experience  with  Mr.  Traill. 
She  hadn't  in  the  least  meant  to.  It  came  out  in 
one  of  those  causeless,  unpremeditated  bursts  of 
confidence  to  which  impulsive  people  are  a  prey, 
and  which  they  very  often  regret.  Mrs.  Darnley  was 
by  turns  vastly  interested  (for  the  thing  had  all  the 
qualities  of  an  adventure — beautiful  young  girl, 
designing  villain  with  a  past,  stolen  interviews,  the 
scoundrel  unmasked,  etc.),  indignant,  and  outraged. 
She  promptly  laid  the  whole  unfortunate  affair  on 
the  doorstep  of  Alice  King,  who  was  a  nice  enough 
old  woman,  and  good-hearted,  no  doubt;  but  a 
dangerous  lunatic  for  all  that,  and  ought  to  be  in 
an  asylum.  Wasn't  the  man  her  friend?  Hadn't 
she  introduced  him  to  Hope  with  her  own  mouth? 

[138] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Of  course  she  had!  Didn't  she  invite  him  to  her 
house?  She  did.  She  was  not  only  a  lunatic,  but, 
in  forcing  her  dreadful  beliefs  and  friends  upon  a 
young  girl,  she  was  a  dangerous  lunatic,  and  George 
must  be  told  about  it  and  prodded  on  to  do  some 
thing. 

Hope  weakly  attempted  to  stem  the  flow  of 
indignation  by  pointing  out  that,  far  from  forcing 
Mr.  Traill  upon  her,  Aunt  Alice  had  been  visibly 
disconcerted  at  their  meeting,  and  had  slanged  the 
man  behind  his  back.  But  Caroline  Darnley,  once 
undammed,  was  a  formidable  torrent.  She  flowed 
over  and  about  the  girl  without  even  pausing  now 
and  then  to  take  breath.  It  was  no  good  trying  to 
excuse  Alice  King.  The  woman's  conduct  was 
inexcusable.  It  just  showed  to  what  lengths  this 
window-smashing,  public-square-screaming  mania 
could  carry  even  a  respectable  old  woman.  And 
Heaven  knew  what  the  world  was  coming  to.  A 
King — a  New  York  King — preaching  lawlessness  and 
free  love — in  spectacles! 

"I'm  afraid  she  didn't  preach  quite  that,"  Hope 
managed  to  get  in;  but  Mrs.  Darnley  waved  her  hand. 

"My  dear,  I  must  remind  you  that  I'm  a  married 
woman,  and  you're  a  young  girl.  /  know." 

Well,  if  she  knew,  like  that,  there  was  nothing 
more  to  say;  but  Hope  began  to  suspect  that  her 
cousin  didn't  know  at  all,  and  was  just  making  a 
ridiculous  noise.  Greatly  to  her  own  surprise,  she 
began  to  feel  a  slight  impatience  and  resentment. 

10  [139] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

To  be  sure,  Aunt  Alice  and  those  luncheon- table 
friends  of  hers  had  had  a  good  deal  to  say  about 
Freedom.  And  Freedom  was  a  dreadful  word  to 
Hope.  It  stood  for  perils  and  horrors.  But  a  half- 
unwilling  conviction  began  to  rise  in  her  mind  that 
there  might  be,  after  all,  a  difference,  as  Miss  King 
had  indicated,  between  freedom  and  license.  She 
began  uneasily  to  wonder  if  she  hadn't  picked  that 
unfortunate  word  out  of  their  conversation  and  lent 
it  a  new  arbitrary  meaning — Traill's  meaning — 
which  might  be  far  from  its  original  scope. 

She  began  to  doubt.  Not  gladly,  not  with  any 
particular  desire  to  set  the  thing  right  in  her  mind. 
She  flinched  from  even  the  most  casual  thought  on 
the  subject.  She  didn't  want  to  doubt.  She  wanted 
to  let  the  whole  question  lie — like  sleeping  dogs — 
forever.  She  had  an  immense  distaste  that  was 
almost  like  nausea  for  the  spectacle  of  this  vast 
horde  of  women  struggling  with  what  seemed  to  be 
their  comfortable  and  pleasant  chains.  But  she 
began  to  doubt. 

Caroline  Darnley  was  talking  on  with  incredible 
spirit  and  energy.  Why,  in  Heaven's  name,  couldn't 
women  be  contented  to  remain  in  their  own  homes 
— or,  at  least,  in  their  own  sphere,  as  Providence  cer 
tainly  had  intended,  or  it  wouldn't  have  laid  upon 
them  the  nuisance  of  bearing  and  bringing  up 
children?  Who,  she  would  like  to  know,  was  going 
to  take  over  that  duty  and  responsibility?  Mrs. 
Darnley  had  recently  seen  in  a  comic  weekly  paper 

[1401 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

some  pictures  of  a  home  in  which  a  feminized 
husband,  in  strange,  lacy  garments,  rocked  the  cradle 
and  crocheted  while  his  robust  wife,  smoking  a 
cigar,  went  out  to  her  political  club.  The  pictures 
might  have  been  a  little  vulgar,  but  they  seemed 
to  her  an  invaluable  warning  against  the  new 
peril.  Women  mustn't  be  allowed  to  desert  their 


^ 

"I  seem  to  remember,"  said  Hope,  a  little  troubled, 
"that  there  are  something  like  ten  millions  of  them 
in  our  country  who  have  to  desert  their  homes  — 
to  work.  I  gather  it's  for  them  that  Aunt  Alice 
wants  the  vote.  It  seems  a  good  many,  doesn't  it?" 

Mrs.  Darnley  gave  a  slight  gasp. 

"Ten  millions!  Oh,  that's  impossible!  My  dear, 
you  must  be  mistaken.  It  must  be  ten  thousand. 
Of  course,  even  that  is  a  good  many.  Well,  I  suppose 
a  certain  number  of  women  must  work  —  sewing 
things,  and  all  that.  Ten  thousand!  Good  Heav 
ens!  However,  I  don't  see  that  voting  and  making 
nuisances  of  themselves  is  going  to  do  any  good. 
They  can't  vote  themselves  out  of  work,  can  they? 
Certainly  not!"  She  made  a  rather  rapid  detour 
round  this  unpleasant  obstacle,  and  was  soon  in 
full  cry  again;  but  she  had  been  somewhat  dashed, 
and  once  or  twice  afterward  said  those  prodigious 
figures  over  to  herself.  "Ten  millions!  Oh,  that 
can't  be  true.  No,  I  don't  believe  it." 

Hope  had  ceased  to  listen,  and  presently  said  she 
thought  she  would  walk  a  little.  (The  two  were 

[141] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

sitting  in  their  deck  chairs  facing  the  sea.)  So  she 
freed  herself  from  her  rug  and  took  a  turn  or  two 
up  and  down  the  deck.  Once  she  stopped  to  lean 
over  the  rail,  and  a  stout,  sporting  young  gentleman, 
with  gay  clothes,  a  predatory  eye,  and  a  titanic 
cigar  halted  beside  her  and  said  it  was  a  pleasant 
day,  wasn't  it?  But  Hope  turned  upon  him  a 
look  of  such  blank  astonishment  that  the  sporting 
young  gentleman  was,  for  the  first  time  in  some 
years,  abashed,  and  waddled  hastily  away,  making 
confused  asthmatic  noises  behind  that  improbable 
cigar. 

She  was  vaguely  conscious  of  a  great  deal  of 
irritation — at  Caroline  Darnley,  at  Aunt  Alice  King, 
at  herself,  at  Woman  Suffrage,  at  the  complicated 
and  harrowing  world  in  general.  Things  wouldn't 
let  you  alone.  You  turned  your  back  on  them,  and 
they  dashed  around  in  front  of  you  again.  They  got 
under  your  feet  so!  They  ran  after  you,  barking 
like  horrid  little  mischievous  dogs.  They  forced 
you  to  do  something  about  them — hit  at  them  with 
your  sunshade  or  throw  them  a  bone.  Hope  in 
this  instance  threw  them  a  bone.  "Oh,  well,  I 
suppose  Aunt  Alice  is  all  right.  I  suppose  it's  quite 
different,  if  one  took  the  trouble  to  look — what  she 
believes,  and  what  he  said  he  believed.  I  suppose 
it's  a  fine  enough  idea,  this  trying  to  get  votes  for 
women  to  protect  themselves  with.  Caroline  is  too 
absurd,  of  course." 

And,  having  thrown  her  bone  in  this  handsome 

[142] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

fashion,  she,  as  it  were,  turned  her  back  and  walked 
hastily  off,  for,  though  common  honesty  might  force 
some  sort  of  concession  from  one's  reason,  one's 
feelings  were  quite  another  matter,  and  serious 
wounds  aren't  healed  in  a  day. 


CHAPTER  XI 

fTlHEY  went  to  Claridge's  in  London,  and  stayed 
JL  there  three  weeks.  Hope  insisted  upon  having 
a  little  sitting-room  of  her  own,  for  she  didn't  in  the 
least  believe  her  cousin's  protestations  about  this 
visit  being  one  of  rest  rather  than  of  recreation. 
She  was  wise,  as  it  turned  out,  for  Mrs.  Darnley, 
without  even  waiting  to  take  her  breath,  plunged  at 
once  into  the  mid-season  gaiety,  and  her  own  quarters 
became  about  as  peaceful  as  the  Stock  Exchange 
on  a  nervous  day.  Hope  lunched  and  dined  for  the 
most  part  in  her  sitting-room,  generally  with  little 
George  as  her  companion,  and  little  George's  father 
often  joined  them  there.  He  had  a  good  club — two, 
in  fact — but  didn't  feel  much  at  home  there;  and, 
besides,  he  was  fond  of  his  wife's  cousin. 

"That  girl's  got  brains,  you  know,  Carrie,"  he 
used  to  say  to  the  disburser  of  his  income. 

And  Caroline  Darnley  would  answer  him  a  little 
absently: 

"Oh,  you  mean  Hope.  Of  course  she  has.  She's 
a  duck.  I  am  so  glad  you  two  get  on.  And  little 
George  as  well.  He  adores  her.  You've  got  to 
dine  at  the  Mallows'  with  me  to-night,  but  when 

[144] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

we  go  on  to  the  opera  you  can  escape  if  you  like. 
There's  a  squash  later  at  Dunfield  House;  but  you'd 
hate  that.  Why  don't  you  take  Hope  to  a  play?" 

He  would  have  been  glad  to  take  her  to  a  play,  or 
anywhere  else,  so  long  as  there  wasn't  a  party;  but 
she  wouldn't  go.  There  must  have  been  just  the 
least  touch  (it  wasn't  more)  of  a  New  England 
conscience  about  her. 

"I  should  love  to  go  to  a  musical  comedy,  George, 
dear — all  the  musical  comedies.  But  I  can't  make 
it  seem  quite — decent,  you  know.  Not  just  yet. 
I've  a  feeling  that  my  mother  would  have  thought  it 
rather  dreadful." 

So  they  stayed  quietly  at  home  in  her  bright  little 
sitting-room  with  flowers  all  about  it,  and  George 
Darnley  was  much  better  contented  than  if  they 
had  gone  out,  and  often  said  so.  He  was  quite 
pathetically  pleased  at  having  a  pretty  girl  to  talk 
with  by  the  hour  and  hour,  and  to  expound  his 
views  to,  and  to  try  the  more  innocent  of  his  jokes 
upon. 

Still,  first  and  last,  Hope  met  a  good  many  of 
her  cousin's  friends,  when  they  looked  in  by  twos 
and  threes  during  the  day,  for  Mrs.  Darnley  was 
almost  as  proud  of  the  girl's  extraordinary  beauty 
as  if  it  had  been  her  own,  and  liked  to  show  her  off. 
Also,  on  a  very  few  occasions  she  lunched  out  quite 
quietly  when  there  were  to  be  no  other  guests. 
And  she  made  a  friend. 

She  went  one  day  with  Mrs.  Darnley  to  lunch 

[145] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

with  the  Mallows  in  Mount  Street,  whom  she  had 
met  on  her  former  trip  abroad.  For  such  grand 
people  they  were  very  simple  and  unpretentious 
when  you  got  them  alone,  and  old  Lord  Mallow  was 
just  as  witty  and  amusing  en  famille  as  he  was  at  a 
big  dinner  party,  or  in  the  Upper  House.  He  told 
Hope  to  her  face  that  she  was  the  prettiest  girl  who 
had  come  his  way  for  just  thirty-five  years,  and 
talked  to  her  all  through  the  meal,  turning  his  back 
upon  Caroline  Darnley,  who  didn't  mind  in  the 
least. 

There  was,  when  they  sat  down,  an  empty  place 
at  the  table,  and  when  she  saw  Hope  looking  at  it, 
Lady  Mallow  said: 

"Evelyn's  late  as  usual.  She  often  doesn't  turn 
up  at  all,  now  that  she  has  something  to  keep  her 
busy;  but  I  told  her  specially  that  you  were  to  be 
here,  and  she  said  she'd  come." 

Hope  dimly  remembered  a  very  handsome  and 
smart  and  rather  overpowering  young  woman,  and 
wondered  what  it  might  be  that  she  had  found  to 
keep  her  busier  than  the  others  of  her  world,  who 
seemed,  themselves,  as  busy  as  messenger  boys; 
but  she  didn't  like  to  ask.  And  presently  Lady 
Evelyn  came  hurriedly  in,  and  slipped  into  her 
place  without  apology. 

She  was  still  very  handsome  and  smart,  but,  Hope 
thought,  much  less  overpowering.  She  seemed 
softened  and,  as  it  were,  humanized,  and  had  the 
nicest  little  friendly  quizzical  smile,  rather  like  her 

[146] 


THE    OPENING  : 

father's.  Hope  was  immensely  intrigued  by  this 
unusual  transformation,  and  wished  Lord  Mallow 
would  let  her  go  for  just  a  few  minutes  so  that  she 
could  talk  to  his  daughter.  But  that  determined 
old  gentleman  wasn't  going  to  let  the  prettiest  girl 
in  thirty-five  years  escape  him  until  he  had  to,  so  the 
two  exchanged  no  more  than  an  occasional  word 
until  luncheon  was  over.  Then,  when  they  were 
rising  from  the  table,  Lady  Evelyn  said: 

"Come  up  to  my  sitting-room  for  a  chat,  won't 
you?  Father's  such  a  monopolist  that  I've  had 
no  chance  at  you  at  all.  We'll  have  our  coffee 
upstairs.  Oh,  somebody  wants  me  at  the  telephone. 
D'you  mind  waiting  just  a  minute?" 

Lord  Mallow  looked  after  his  daughter  and 
laughed. 

"  She's  always  running  off  to  the  telephone,  Evelyn 
is,  just  when  you're  in  the  middle  of  something. 
They're  a  jumpy  lot,  the  Shrieking  Sisterhood. 
I  think  they  put  on  a  bit  extra  of  the  business  air 
to  impress  people. '  Well,  it's  been  a  good  thing 
for  Evelyn,  anyhow.  Taken  her  mind  off  herself. 
She  was  going  sour  a  little." 

"'Shrieking  Sisterhood'?"  Hope  wondered.  "You 
don't  mean — good  Heavens!  those  suffragettes.  Is 
Lady  Evelyn  a  suffragette?" 

And  Lord  Mallow  laughed  again. 

"Is  she?     Rather!     You  ask  her!" 

Hope  was  downright  shocked.  Lady  Evelyn 
Foster,  of  all  women!  Why,  this  sort  of  person 

[147] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

didn't  do  such  things!  Wasn't  it  a  little  undignified? 
To  be  sure,  Lord  Mallow  was  well  known  as  a  pretty 
Liberal  peer,  still— 

"Tell  me,  Lord  Mallow,"  she  asked,  suddenly; 
"do  you  believe  in  Woman  Suffrage?  Are  you 
for  it?" 

The  old  gentleman  looked  up^at  her — he  was  a 
short  man — with  a  kind  of  sly  twinkle. 

"You're  not  by  any  chance  a  newspaper  re 
porter?"  he  inquired,  humorously.  "You're  not 
going  to  show  me  up  in  print?  No?  Well,  then — 
officially,  I'm  not.  Down  with  'em!  Put  the  howl 
ing  unsexed  lunatics  in  prison  at  once!  They  make 
me  ill.  Privately,  ^X  think  we've  already  insulted 
our  women  too  long  by  treating  them  as  a  combina 
tion  of  slave  and  household  ornament. "  We've  been 
throwing  sops  to  'em  for  forty  years  orUiereabouts — 
municipal  suffrage  to  single  women  and  widows, 
county  suffrage,  parish  and  district — that  sort  of 
thing.  Why  not  give  them  the  whole  thing  and  see 
what  will  happen?  (Cither  women  are  reasoning 
human  beings  or  they're  ornamental  animals.  If 
they're  ornamental  animals  then  we'd  no  business 
to  give  them  the  vote  in  small  local  matters.  If 
they're  not,  we  are  behaving  like  bullies  in  refusing 
them  the  whole  loaf// And  all  this,  mind  you,  is 
very  noble  of  me  to  admit,  because  it's  quite  against 
my  taste.  I  like  ornaments. 

"One  of  the  chief  nuisances  of  growing  old," 
said  Lord  Mallow,  rubbing  the  back  of  his  gray 

[148] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

head  a  little  ruefully,  "is  that  your  reason  and  your 
prejudices  are  forever  yowling  and  spitting  at  each 
other  like  a  pair  of  cats.  When  you're  young  you 
don't  mind  that,  but  an  old  man  likes  his  peace. 
He  likes  to  sit  comfortably  down  and  wrap  his  prej 
udices  round  him  (you  see  one  of  those  cats  has  got 
skinned),  and  reflect  upon  how  fine  a  place  the  world 
was  in  his  day,  and  sneer  at  the  rising  generation 
and  their  ridiculous  ideas.  That's  what  an  old  man 
likes  to  do.  But  if  he  has  an  inconvenient  touch 
of  reason  somewhere  about  him,  it's  a  bit  upsetting. 
It  interferes  like  anything  with  his  comfort." 

"If  you  believe  in  it,"  said  Hope,  a  little  stolidly, 
"why  don't  you  come  out  for  it?" 

And  again  the  old  gentleman  looked  up  at  her  with 
that  sly  twinkle. 

"You  young  people  are  such  thrusters!  You're 
such  downright,  out-and-out,  uncompromising  war 
riors!  Wait  till  you  get  old,  and  then  you'll  see. 
But  for  all  that,"  he  said,  with  a  grin — "for  all 
that,  you  know,  I  daresay  I  shall  lock  all  the  doors 
one  day,  and  have  a  glass  of  poison  handy,  and  then 
stick  my  head  out  a  window  and  shout  'Votes  for 
Women!'  to  the  people  in  the  street." 

Hope  laughed,  thinking  that  a  rather  funny  pic 
ture;  but  a  year  or  so  afterward  she  read  a  London 
despatch  in  a  New  York  paper,  and  found  that  that 
"one  day"  had  arrived  for  old  Lord  Mallow,  though 
not  precisely  as  he  had  foretold  it,  and  she  realized 
that  he  must  have  been  very  seriously  considering 

[149] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

the  step  at  the  time  she  lunched  in  Mount  Street 
and  they  had  their  little  talk  together. 

Lady  Evelyn  came  back  from  the  telephone  and 
carried  Hope  off  upstairs  to  a  sunny  little  room  all 
black  lacquer  and  Chippendale  chintz,  with  pagodas 
on  it,  and  yellow  Chinese  rugs,  and  they  had  a  long 
talk  that  was  to  Hope  by  turns  delightful  and  dis 
turbing.  She  was  delighted  by  Lady  Evelyn's 
friendliness  and  humor  and  a  kind  of  sound  deep 
sweetness.  But  she  became  increasingly  aware  that 
all  these  agreeable  qualities  were  only  the  outer 
manifestations  of  the  girl's  profound  happiness  in  her 
chosen  work,  and  of  her  simple  belief  that  this  work 
was  the  most  important  thing  in  the  world.  And 
that  disturbed  Hope  very  much.  It  made  her  ner 
vous  and  uncomfortable.  There  must  be  something 
all  wrong  somewhere. 

It  was  all  very  well  for  Aunt  Alice  King  (about 
whom,  by  the  way,  Lady  Evelyn  seemed  to  know  a 
great  deal,  and  for  whom  she  plainly  had  the  highest 
respect  and  admiration).  Aunt  Alice  was  a  lone  old 
woman,  and  old  women  were  always  busying  them 
selves  with  Causes.  But  this  smart  and  handsome 
daughter  of  a  famous  peer!  It  was  all  very  sub 
versive  of  accepted  conditions,  and  puzzling  and  un 
comfortable.  She  hadn't  wanted  to  think  about 
the  troublesome  subject  at  all — not  for  a  long  time. 
She  realized  now  that  one  of  her  reasons  for  having 
been  so  glad  to  leave  America  was  to  get  away  from 
Woman  Suffrage.  Yet  almost  the  first  thing  she 

[150] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

had  seen  in  London  was  a  woman  speaking  to  a 
derisive  crowd  in  a  public  square. 

She  went  home  to  Claridge's  thoughtful,  and  not 
very  happy. 

Lady  Evelyn,  leaving  the  house  somewhat  later, 
encountered  her  mother  on  the  stairs,  who  wanted 
to  know  how  she  had  got  on  with  that  beautiful  girl. 
Lady  Evelyn  said: 

"She's  a  dear  child.  One  couldn't  help  loving 
her.  She  has  an  appeal.  I  was  disappointed,  in  a 
way,  because  an  aunt  or  cousin,  or  something  of  hers 
in  New  York,  is  one  of  their  "best  Suffrage  leaders,  and 
I  supposed  this  girl  would  have  been  working  with 
her.  That's  why  I  wanted  to  manage  a  chat." 

"She's  not  one  of  you,  then?"  Lady  Mallow 
asked. 

And  her  daughter  said:  "Oh,  dear,  no!  She's 
rather  off  the  whole  subject.  I  don't  know  just 
why.  Something  or  other  happened,  I  think,  to  put 
her  off.  But  she'll  come  back  again.  At  least,  I 
think  so.  It  depends.  She's  an  impressionable  in 
fant.  I  could  show  her  some  horrors  and  convert 
her  in  a  week,  if  I  chose." 

"Well,"  said  Lady  Mallow,  a  little  indifferently, 
"why  don't  you?" 

And  her  daughter  seemed  to  find  some  difficulty 
in  answering. 

"I  don't  quite  know.  Some  people — I'm  not  sure 
she  has  a  hard  enough  shell.  Things  torment  her  a 
good  deal,  I  fancy.  P'raps  she'd  best  marry  and 

[1511 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

have  a  baby  and  never  hear  about  votes.  Just  the 
same,  she's  going  to  lunch  with  me  in  Dover  Street 
to-morrow."  And  Lady  Evelyn  laughed  briefly  at 
a  certain  inconsistency  that  she  seemed  to  detect 
in  herself,  and  went  out  about  her  business — which 
was  the  business  of  the  women  of  England. 

And  Hope  lunched  with  her  on  the  morrow  at  her 
club  in  Dover  Street,  and,  though  Lady  Evelyn  pur 
posely  refrained  from  introducing  the  subject  of 
Equal  Suffrage,  they  were  soon  talking  about  it; 
so  the  American  girl  must  have  brought  it  up  her 
self. 

She  was  uneasy,  Lady  Evelyn  could  see.  The 
subject  fascinated  her.  That  was  plain.  But,  for 
some  unexplained  reason,  it  repelled  her,  too.  She 
seemed  to  dread  it,  and  yet  couldn't  let  it  be.  She 
demanded  certain  information,  got  some  horrors, 
and  turned  white  over  them. 

It  was  like  torturing  a  kitten  or  hurting  a  butter 
fly,  Lady  Evelyn  thought,  and  hated  herself.  The 
girl  was  so  beautiful,  and  such  a  child. 

"There's  no  militant  material  here.  You  might 
as  well  harness  a  serious-minded  humming-bird  or 
try  to  make  a  kitten  draw  a  cart." 

Pretty  poor  judgment  that.  She  did  the  girl  less 
than  justice.  But  Hope's  personal  appearance, 
when  she  was  troubled  about  anything,  was  dis 
tracting.  She  looked  so  very  lovely  and  helpless  and 
pathetic.  Your  chief  desire  was  to  pat  her  on  her 
red  head  and  kiss  her  (if  you  dared),  and  tell  her  that 

[15*] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

everything  was  quite  all  right  and  that  she  mustn't 
worry  any  longer. 

Nevertheless,  the  two  went  on  from*  luncheon 
to  the  headquarters  of  Lady  Evelyn's  organization, 
and  there  picked  up  a  handsome  gray-haired  lady, 
one  Miss  Warriner,  who  had  the  gentlest  manner  in 
the  world,  and  had  served  a  term  in  prison  for  riot 
ing.  She  asked  Hope  a  great  many  questions  about 
Miss  Alice  King,  whom  it  appeared  she  had  met, 
and  then  they  went,  a  half  dozen  of  them,  to  a  public 
meeting  in  Chelsea,  where  Hope  heard  an  astonish 
ingly  eloquent  speech  by  a  lady  of  the  East  End, 
who  hadn't  an  aitch  to  her  name  and  didn't  care, 
but  was  visibly  on  fire  for  The  Cause,  and  after  the 
first  few  moments  ignited  her  audience,  too — hood 
lums,  street-loafers,  working-men  on  their  homeward 
way,  odd  fish  of  all  sorts,  a  few  doubtful-looking 
females. 

Hope  was  uncommonly  silent  that  evening  at 
dinner,  and  George  Darnley  insisted  upon  taking  her 
to  a  play  to  cheer  her  up,  which,  as  it  was  a  funny 
play,  engaging  the  talents  of  Mr.  Charles  Hawtrey, 
it  did. 

There  is  no  telling  what  might  not  have  come  of 
all  this  but  for  the  counterbalancing  activities  of 
another  new  friend  of  Hope's,  a  certain  Mr.  Arthur 
Paradine,  who  used  to  drop  in  rather  frequently  for 
a  chat  and  a  cup  of  tea.  He  was  an  unmarried  gen 
tleman  of  great  leisure,  who  dined  out  quite  regularly 
every  evening,  and  was  esteemed  to  be  very  clever. 

[153] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Providence  had  given  him  wit  and  the  face  of  a  suffer 
ing  jester,  a  clown  in  anguish,  a  man  who  laughed 
that  he  mightn't  scream.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  this 
extraordinary  physiognomy  was  an  absolute  sham, 
for  Mr.  Paradine  had  never  in  his  life  suffered  any 
thing  more  than  the  pangs  of  boredom;  but  wit 
he  certainly  had,  and  wisdom,  too,  of  a  worldly, 
rather  destructive  kind. 

He  was  a  great  comfort  to  Hope.  He  sat  grinning 
and  sipping  tea  in  a  comfortable  chair,  and  de 
molished  the  few  poor,  stumbling  arguments  she  was 
able  to  construct  in  the  interests  of  Votes  for  Women 
with  such  easy  skill  that  she  had  to  laugh  at  them 
herself.  Mr.  Paradine  made  these  ambitious  Ama 
zons  appear  very  funny  indeed,  rather  like  absurd 
pictures  in  a  comic  paper.  And  he  did  it  with  no 
seeming  rancor.  He  wasn't  in  the  least  bitter. 
He  merely  thought  the  whole  thing  absurd,  and  he 
had  the  art  to  convey  his  thought  without  its  losing 
much  in  transit. 

He  had  his  big  guns,  too,  as  well  as  his  rattle  of 
musketry.  He  went  down  and  back  to  the  very 
beginnings  of  life  and  the  necessary  difference  in  the 
functions  of  the  sexes,  and  this  was  a  more  telling 
attack  than  his  wit  and  humor.  It  seemed  to  Hope 
profound,  and,  at  the  moment,  conclusive.  To  be 
sure,  she  had  hours  of  recurrent  doubt  when  Mr. 
Paradine  wasn't  by.  At  night,  perhaps,  when  she 
was  wakeful.  Then  some  of  Lady  Evelyn  Foster's 
horrors — some  of  those  dreadful  industrial  condi- 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

tions — would  come  before  her  eyes  to  torment  her. 
But  at  such  times  she  would  banish  these  visions  by 
saying,  as  she  had  heard  him  say: 

"Wait!  Wait!  Don't  be  in  such  a  hurry  to 
make  the  world  perfect!  Chi  va  piano,  va  sano. 
Look  at  the  progress  civilization  has  already  made 
in  just  those  matters,  and  without  women's  votes! 
That  '11  cheer  you  up — or  ought  to.  The  poor  man 
— and  woman — is  getting  a  better  chance  every  day. 
In  fifty  years  he  won't  have  an  earthly  thing  to 
complain  of  but  indigestion  or  gout." 

That  helped  to  lay  the  ghost — sometimes.  Not 
always.  In  any  case  it  got  her  through  the  weeks  of 
her  London  visit,  and  afterward  it  wasn't  needed,  for 
the  travelers  went  to  Paris,  where  there  are  no 
Suffragettes,  and  amused  themselves  highly  there. 
And  at  the  beginning  of  August  they  betook  them 
selves  with  two  motors  and  heaps  of  new  clothes 
to  Deauville,  where  a  comfortable  villa  stood  upon 
a  hill  of  pines  overlooking  the  sea  and  awaited  their 
arrival. 
11 


CHAPTER  XII 

rTIHE  terrace  of  the  Casino  at  Trouville  during 
JL  August  is  about  as  frivolous  an  inclosure  as 
exists  nowadays.  Few  people  would  be  mad  enough 
deliberately  to  choose  it  as  the  theater  for  the  more 
serious  moments  of  their  lives'  drama.  But  Hope 
and  Mr.  Roger  Bacon,  though  to  be  sure  they  had 
no  voice  in  the  matter,  met  there  after  not  having 
seen  each  other  for  several  years,  and,  as  their 
meeting  was  of  great  and  serious  importance  to  them 
both  (not  to  mention  one  other,  who  will,  in  due 
time,  appear  in  this  history),  the  terrace  of  the  Casino 
at  Trouville  seems  to  me  somewhat  to  lose  character 
by  it. 

Or,  to  gain,  as  your  point  of  view  may  chance 
to  be. 

The  Darnley  party  had  come  the  short  distance 
to  Trouville  that  afternoon  to  see  a  friend  of  Caro 
line's,  who  was  supposed  to  have  arrived  on  the 
Havre  boat,  and  to  be  at  one  of  the  hotels.  But 
this  lady  hadn't  turned  up,  and  so  they  went  to  the 
Casino  to  listen  to  the  music  and  solace  themselves 
with  ices,  all  but  George  D.,  who  solaced  himself 
with  weesky-soda  instead. 

[156] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

It  was  cool  and  dim  inside  the  Casino,  and  silent, 
too,  for  the  hour  was  early — not  yet  four — but  out 
side  the  sunshine  lay  hot  and  bright  on  the  terrace, 
and  the  few  people  there  had  taken  shelter  under  the 
awnings  at  the  sides,  and  were  drinking  iced  things 
in  long  glasses. 

Hope  put  up  her  sunshade  and  walked  out  to  the 
balustrade,  where  a  little  breeze  from  the  sea  beyond 
blew  cool  against  her  face.  Children  and  nou-nous 
and  a  few  grown-ups  passed  back  and  forth  under 
her,  for  the  terrace  is  raised  high  above  the  beach, 
and,  off  to  the  right,  where  the  machines  and  the  gay- 
striped  tents  were,  she  could  see  a  handful  of  bathers, 
though  it  was  not  the  hour. 

A  man  got  up  from  one  of  the  small  tables  under 
a  near-by  awning  and  came  out  into  the  sun  where 
she  was.  She  had  learned  in  France  to  keep  her  eyes 
to  herself;  but  when  the  man  spoke  to  her  she  knew 
instantly,  before  he  had  said  two  words,  and  before 
she  had  looked  up  at  him,  who  he  was.  He  said: 

"You  can't  possibly  be  anybody  but  Miss  Hope 
Standish.  May  I  recall  myself  to  you?  Roger 
Bacon." 

"You  needn't,"  Hope  answered,  giving  him  her 
hand.  "I  remember  you  perfectly.  I  should  think 
so!" 

It  is  not  altogether  surprising  that  the  sound  of 
his  voice,  and  the  unexpected  sight  of  him,  three 
thousand  miles  from  home,  should  have  given  her 
such  a  sudden  thrill  of  pleasure  and  excitement. 

[157] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

He  had  been  her  premier  amour.  He  had  long 
stood  to  her  for  everything  that  is  noble,  heroic,  and 
worshipful.  Still  she  was  surprised  and  embarrassed 
at  the  agitation  that  stirred  in  her,  and  wondered  if 
it  could  possibly  be  apparent,  and  fell  into  an  agony 
over  that,  and  asked,  rather  wildly: 

"Do  you  still  collect  pewter?" 

She  couldn't  have  pleased  him  more.  To  think 
of  her  remembering  that  ancient  hobby  of  his! 
And  as  for  agitation,  he  was  a  thousand  leagues  from 
detecting  it.  He  thought  her  almost  too  grown  up 
and  well  poised  and  unlike  the  frank  child  he  had 
known.  He  shook  his  head,  smiling. 

"No,  it's  Chinese  things  now — bronze  and  cloi 
sonne  and  wood-carvings.  And  rugs,  too.  What 
a  memory  you've  got!" 

"Well,"  Hope  said,  "I  was  a  little  girl  and  you 
rowed  on  the  crew,  and  still  you  were  nice  to  me. 
I  adored  you,  of  course.  What  little  girl  wouldn't 
have?" 

She  laughed,  and  Mr.  Roger  Bacon  held  his  breath, 
for  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  was  looking  at  far  the 
most  beautiful  human  being  he  had  ever  seen,  or 
could  have  hoped  to  see.  And  that  made  the  mo 
ment  an  important  one.  He  had  often  thought  of 
the  shy,  pretty,  red-haired  child  in  New  Haven, 
who  had  looked  up  at  him  with  such  unmistakable 
admiration  out  of  her  big  eyes.  He  had  remembered 
her  with  an  odd  mixture  of  amusement  and  senti 
ment.  He  had  wondered  what  had  become  of  her, 

[158] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

and  if  he  should  ever  see  her  again,  and  if  she  had 
got  prettier  still,  or  plain  instead,  as  so  many  pretty 
children  do.  He  had  laughed  at  himself  more  than 
once  for  sentimentalizing  over  a  little  schoolgirl; 
but  the  sentiment — or  the  ghost  of  a  sentiment — 
had  persisted  for  all  that  until  it  had  come  to  be  a 
part  of  his  life — a  picture  on  the  wall  of  a  seldom- 
frequented  room  in  his  mental  house — a  miniature 
laid  away  in  a  secret  drawer. 

Quantities  of  men — and  all  women — carry  souvenirs 
of  that  sort  through  a  good  portion  of  their  lives;  but 
they  seldom  are  talked  about,  and  so  we  fall  into  the 
way  of  thinking  they  don't  exist — that  sentiment 
of  that  pretty,  old-fashioned  kind  is  dead.  It  isn't, 
of  course,  and,  thank  God!  never  will  die  until  the 
race  dies,  too. 

So  Mr.  Roger  Bacon  held  his  breath  in  silent,  ut 
ter  delight,  and  thought  he  was  beholding  the  lovely 
beauty  of  all  the  ages,  which  was  putting  it  strongly, 
even  though  Hope  did  look  like  the  reincarnated 
spirit  of  the  dreams  of  Praxiteles  further  endowed 
with  red  hair  (which  might  or  might  not  have  seemed 
an  embellishment  to  the  gentleman  who  dreamed  her 
so  long  ago).  And  when  she  smiled  it  seemed  to  Mr. 
Roger  Bacon  that  he  could  look  through  her  well- 
remembered  big  eyes  into  a  soul  as  fresh  and  whole 
some  and  sweet  and  vigorous  and  lovely  as  her  body 
was.  And  he  wanted  to  get  down  on  his  knees. 

He  was  a  fanciful  man. 

She  had  tilted  her  sunshade  over  her  shoulder  to 

[159] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

be  out  of  the  way,  and  the  full  glare  of  the  sun  was 
across  her  head  and  face,  which  had  no  cause  to  be 
afraid  of  it.  She  hadn't  got  burnt  or  tanned  during 
the  past  ten  days  of  bathing  and  tennis-playing,  but 
she  had  acquired  a  little  band  of  freckles  across  the 
bridge  of  her  nose.  Now  some  people  like  freckles, 
and  more  do  not.  Hope,  who  envisaged  her  per 
sonal  appearance  with  great  calm  (perhaps  the  calm 
of  content),  thought  they  didn't  matter  much,  and 
Mr.  Roger  Bacon  thought  they  were  just  the  one 
needed  humanizing  touch  to  hold  her  down,  as  it 
were,  to  earth. 

The  hot  sun  seemed  not  to  touch  her  cool  fresh 
skin  at  all,  but  it  burned  in  her  hair,  that  was  so  like 
a  bay  horse  in  color,  and  it  turned  her  eyes  to  a  kind 
of  reddish  gold  (transparent,  as  we  have  seen),  so 
that  against  the  unrelieved  black  of  frock  and  hat 
and  sunshade  her  beautiful  head  stood  out  like  a 
lit  and  shining  vision  in  the  night. 

Mr.  Bacon,  who  had  been  staring  in  a  kind  of 
trance,  became  aware  that  nobody  had  spoken  for 
rather  too  long,  so  he  breathed  again — doubtless 
just  in  time  to  save  his  life — and  shifted  his  eyes 
and  said: 

"You're  in  mourning.  I'm  very  sorry  to  see 
that." 

She  explained  that  her  mother  had  died  at  the 
end  of  May,  and  looked  down  at  the  thin  black  of  her 
frock  with  a  little  frown. 

"I  don't  like  mourning  myself.     I  hate  the  idea 

[160] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

of  it — advertising  one's  grief.  I  think  it's  a  rather 
hideous  thing  to  do.  But  my  mother  never  wore 
colors  after  my  father's  death,  fifteen  years  ago.  She 
had  a  feeling  about  it.  I  suppose  most  people  have. 
So  I  wear  black  because  I  know  she  would  like  me 
to." 

Bacon  nodded. 

"Of  course.  But  I  know  how  you  feel.  I  hate  it 
too.  It  has  been  a  kind  of  family  prejudice  with  us, 
and  neither  my  sister  nor  I  wore  black  when  our 
parents  died.  They'd  have  hated  us  to.  My 
sister  is  here,  by  the  way — eating  an  ice  under  the 
awning.  Would  you  mind  meeting  her?  I  think 
you'd  like  her.  Everybody  does." 

Hope  said  she  would  be  delighted,  and  they  turned 
back  toward  the  table  that  he  had  left.  A  woman 
with  gray  hair  rose  at  once  to  meet  them,  and  Hope 
recognized  her  rival  for  the  affections  of  the  little 
girl  in  Central  Park  that  day  she  had  waited  for 
Traill. 

It  brought  back  with  a  painful  shock  scenes  and 
states  of  mind  long  banished  from  her  consciousness, 
and  she  was  rather  discouraged ;  but  that  didn't  last 
long,  for  nothing  painful  or  unpleasant  could  possibly 
exist  in  the  atmosphere  of  sweetness  and  kindliness 
and  charm  that  Bacon's  sister,  Mrs.  Cartwright, 
radiated  about  her. 

Mrs.  Cartwright  seemed  to  catch  that  light  of 
recognition  in  the  girl's  eyes,  for  she  gave  a  little 
laugh  that  seemed  to  be  of  pleasure,  and  said: 

[161] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

"Isn't  this  nice?  I  wondered  if  we  should  ever 
meet  again.  I  wished  we  might.  And  now  I've 
got  my  wish.  How  splendid  that  you  and  Roger 
should  be  old  friends!" 

Her  brother  looked  at  her  in  great  surprise,  and 
she  said: 

"Do  you  remember  my  telling  you  about  a  girl 
I  saw  in  the  Park  last  spring  once,  when  I  was 
walking  with  Cecil  Harding,  and  how  a  wee  child  ran 
to  her  when  I  persecuted  it  with  my  attentions?" 

Bacon  said: 

"By  Jove,  yes!  Of  course  I  do."  He  turned  to 
glance  at  Hope,  looking  very  much  pleased.  "I 
wish  I  dared  repeat  my  sister's  description  of  you." 

Hope  said: 

"I  dare  you!" 

But  Mrs.  Cartwright  wouldn't  have  it. 

"No.  I'll  tell  her  myself  one  day,  when  I  know 
her  much  better — if  I'm  to  be  allowed  to.  Besides, 
Miss  Standish  has  doubtless  heard  all  that  a  good 
many  times  over  from  her  other  admirers." 

They  began  to  talk  about  their  traveling  plans,  as 
fellow-countrymen  usually  do  when  they  meet  in 
foreign  parts — the  Cartwrights  and  Roger  Bacon 
had  just  arrived  in  Trouville,  and  were  quartered 
at  the  Roches  Noires — and  while  they  discussed  there 
the  Darnleys  came  across  the  terrace,  George  D. 
with  his  weesky-soda  glass  in  his  hand,  as  if  he  were 
afraid  somebody  would  drink  it  up  if  he  left  it 
unguarded. 

[162] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

The  two  groups  seemed  to  know  each  other  very 
well,  so  well  that  Caroline  Darnley  and  Mrs.  Cart- 
wright  exchanged  kisses,  and  they  all  called  one 
another  by  their  first  names. 

"And  I  didn't  even  know,"  said  Roger  Bacon  to 
Hope,  looking  very  fierce  and  angry — "I  didn't  even 
know  that  the  Darnleys  were  cousins  of  yours.  Why, 
hang  them!  I've  known  them  ever  since  I  was  a 
little  boy.  I  knew  them  both  long  before  they  were 
married.  Caroline  might  have  told  me!  She  knew 
we  were  in  New  Haven  at  the  same  time." 

"Yes,"  Hope  pointed  out,  "and  she  knew  I  was 
an  infant  at  the  time  you  were  there.  Don't  you 
go  abusing  Caroline  Darnley,  or  I'll  tell  on  you. 
Besides,  it's  all  right  now,  isn't  it?" 

"You  bet  it's  all  right  now!"  said  Mr.  Bacon, 
with  great  emphasis. 

The  party  from  the  Roches  Noires  dined  that  even 
ing  at  Villa  Belle  Marquise,  and  Hope  met  Henry 
Cartwright,  a  fair,  square-headed,  tired  man  of  that 
class  vaguely  called,  in  the  public  prints,  "finan 
ciers."  He  looked,  at  a  little  distance,  younger  than 
his  wife,  who  was  prematurely  gray,  but  closer  to, 
you  saw  that  his  face  was  deeply  marked,  and 
wrinkled  about  the  eyes,  and  that  he  must  be  some 
where  late  in  the  forties.  He  didn't  say  very  much 
except  to  young  George,  who  had  been  allowed  to 
stay  up  and  see  him,  and  Hope  wondered  if  Mrs.  Cart- 
wright  might  not  have  a  rather  dull  time  of  it  at 

[163] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

home.  But  as  she  watched  the  two  during  the 
evening  she  began  to  think  she  had  been  wrong, 
and  later  on  became  very  sure  of  it,  for  she  saw  that 
the  silent,  undemonstrative,  weary  man  held  his  wife 
in  a  single-hearted  affection  so  deep  and  strong  that 
it  made  many  a  more  showy  love  affair  look  cheap 
and  theatrical.  They  understood  each  other,  these 
two  (a  very  rare  thing),  and  so  didn't  need  many 
words;  and  they  were  united  not  only  by  then* 
common  love,  but  by  a  common  sorrow  as  well, 
for  they  had  had  one  child  and  lost  it,  and  never 
another,  though  they  would  have  thanked  God 
for  ten.  And  that  was  the  great  grief  of  then* 
lives. 

Several  times  during  dinner  Hope  looked  up  to 
find  the  pale,  expressionless  eyes  of  the  financier 
fixed  upon  her,  and  later,  when  they  sat  over  their 
coffee  on  the  terrace  with  the  moon  overhead  and 
fairy  lamps  about  the  little  tables,  he  came  and 
dropped  into  the  chair  by  her  side.  He  spoke  only 
once  or  twice.  He  was  an  incredibly  silent  man. 
But,  oddly  enough,  she  found  him  not  hard  to  talk 
to.  He  listened  to  her  rather  gravely,  to  be  sure, 
but  with  sympathy,  and  she  began  to  like  him,  so  that 
when,  at  the  end  of  the  evening,  he  shook  her  hand 
with  a  kind  of  ponderous  solemnity,  and  said,  "We 
must  see  a  good  deal  of  you  in  New  York  next  winter 
if  you  think  you  can  stand  us,"  she  turned  quite  pink 
with  pleasure. 

That  is  one  of  the  rewards  a  silent  man  is  blessed 

[164] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

with.  An  extraordinary  value  is  put  upon  the  few 
words  he  permits  himself  to  speak. 

She  had  a  little  talk  with  Mrs.  Cartwright,  and 
walked  for  a  brief  time  up  and  down  a  moonlit  path 
under  the  pines  with  Roger  Bacon. 

The  breeze  stirred  the  tree  tops  over  their  heads. 
Beneath  them  they  could  hear  the  sea  washing 
gently  like  the  sound  of  a  broom  on  carpet,  and  at 
times  music  came  to  their  ears  from  the  Casino  at 
Trouville,  very  sweet  and  faint  and  far  away. 

They  talked  about  New  Haven  and  about  Bacon's 
cousins,  and  other  people  there  whom  they  had 
both  known — a  conversation  with  a  great  many 
"Do  you  remember's"  in  it,  and  "What's  become 
of  so-and-so's."  He  hadn't  been  back  to  the  uni 
versity  town,  it  appeared,  since  he  had  come  away 
with  his  degree — not  even  for  a  football  game. 

It  was  a  rather  disappointing  talk  to  both  of  them. 
Each  was  quite  sure  that  there  was  a  whole  world 
of  more  important  and  intimate  and  exciting  topics 
within  reach,  if  only  one  or  the  other  would  make 
a  long  arm;  but  they  were  conscious  of  an  odd  and 
awkward  restraint — that  absurd  embarrassment 
which  falls  upon  young  people  who  have  thought 
such  a  great  deal  about  each  other,  and  are  tongue- 
tied  or  reduced  to  banalities  when  they  meet. 

Bacon  presently  made  a  valiant  if  belated  attempt 
to  break  this  down,  but  Hope  took  fright  before  his 
efforts  —  perhaps  the  man  overdid  things  —  and 
turned  baffling  and  coquettish  and  ridiculous,  and 

[165] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

insisted  upon  rejoining  the  others  on  the  brick- 
paved  terrace.  Caroline  Darnley  would  be  furious 
with  her,  she  said,  for  disappearing. 

"He's  a  good  fella,  young  Roger  Bacon  is,"  George 
D.  said,  later  on,  when  the  guests  had  gone  home. 
"He's  as  good  a  young  fella  as  I  know.  No  non 
sense  about  him.  Shoots  a  little,  hunts  a  little, 
plays  polo  a  little,  and  takes  care  of  the  estate.  He's 
got  a  couple  of  old  aunts  down  Washington  Square 
way — elderly  tabbies  with  a  tongue  apiece.  Roger 
keeps  'em  from  dying  of  fright  when  they  see  by 
their  Evening  Post  that  the  market's  down." 

"Is  that  all  he  does?"  Hope  asked;  and  George 
D.  wagged  his  head  at  her. 

"Don't  you  go  thinking  that's  a  lame  dog's  job, 
my  girl!  Taking  care  of  a  sizable  property  for  a 
lot  of  women  in  these  wobbly  days,  and  doing  it  as 
well  as  he  does,  is  enough  to  give  any  man  an  appetite 
for  his  meals.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  though,  I  believe 
he  takes  some  interest  in  reform  politics.  So  I  hear 
tell.  I  don't  know  much  about  that." 

"I  used  to  know  him  in  New  Haven,"  Hope  said, 
"when  I  was  but  a  young  and  simple  thing.  He 
rowed  on  the  crew,  and  I  thought  he  was  a  blend 
of  Achilles  and  Galahad  and  the  Cid." 

"Couldn't  say,"  observed  George  Darnley.  "No 
friends  of  mine.  But  he's  a  good  fella.  You  take 
my  word  for  it." 

And  Hope  said  she  would. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  Cartwright  party  remained  in  Trouville 
only  a  week,  for  at  the  end  of  that  time  Roger 
Bacon  was  unexpectedly  called  back  to  New  York, 
and  his  sister  and  brother-in-law  went  away  to 
Switzerland.  But  during  that  week  they  saw  a  great 
deal  of  the  Belle  Marquise  household.  Every  morn 
ing,  soon  after  sunrise,  when  only  a  handful  of  early- 
rising  enthusiasts  was  about,  Hope,  the  Georges,  old 
and  young,  and  Roger  Bacon  swam;  Hope,  to  her 
delight,  as  unencumbered  as  the  men  in  her  tight, 
one-piece  maillot  (which  Caroline  Darnley  wouldn't 
permit  at  the  fashionable  hour  later  in  the  day). 
They  played  tennis;  they  watched  the  polo,  though 
Bacon  didn't  play;  they  motored  up  and  down 
the  coast  and  inland;  they  lunched  chez  Guillaume 
le  Conquerant  at  Dives,  and  they  called  on  the 
Maeterlincks  at  St.  Wandrille. 

Roger  Bacon  proved  to  be,  in  Hope's  judgment, 
the  perfect  companion.  She  had  been  a  little  afraid. 
Their  meeting  had  been  to  her,  as  well  as  to  the  man, 
something  of  an  emotional  event.  It  couldn't, 
in  fact,  have  been  otherwise  after  that  old  history 
of  hero  worship.  Then,  when  he  had  first  dined 

[167] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

at  Villa  Belle  Marquise,  there  had  come  between 
them  that  uncomfortable  sense  of  constraint  which 
always  means  electricity  of  a  definite  type  in  the  air. 
She  had  been  afraid  this  sort  of  thing  would  go  on, 
and  she  didn't  want  it  to.  She  liked  and  admired 
the  man  tremendously;  but  she  didn't  want  to  be 
flirted  with  or  sighed  over  or  made  love  to.  She 
wasn't  at  all  in  the  mood  for  it.  She  wanted  just 
to  play  about  in  the  sun.  And  by  some  lucky 
kinship  of  mood,  or  miracle  of  understanding,  or 
devilish  ingenuity  of  deep-laid  plan,  Bacon  had  the 
wisdom  to  make  of  himself  exactly  what  she  wished 
of  him  to  be. 

So  they  had  the  most  delightful  week  that  ever  was, 
and  Hope  could  have  wept  when  Bacon's  abrupt 
summons  to  America  arrived.  He  himself  was 
furious,  and  said  a  great  many  hard  things  of  the 
idiotic  mismanagement  on  the  part  of  his  business 
agents  that  had  made  this  return  in  mid-August 
necessary. 

"As  regards  my  own  particular  personal  pennies," 
he  said,  "the  maniacs  can  chuck  'em  into  the  North 
River,  or  spend  'em  going  to  roof  gardens,  if  they 
want  to,  I  shouldn't  stir  an  inch  from  here!  But  my 
aunts,  Amelia  and  Muriel,  will  have  taken  to  their 
beds  at  Narragansett.  I  can't  let  then*  affairs  get 
messed  up.  I've  got  to  go. 

"You  might  say  you're  sorry!"  he  suggested, 
morosely.  "You'll  probably  drown  one  morning 
without  me."  (An  unkind  allusion  to  her  habit 

[168] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

of  swimming  straight  out  to  sea,  and  then  getting 
out  of  breath,  and  having  to  be  rescued.) 

Hope  said  of  course  she  was  sorry.  And  it  was 
true.  But  her  mind  was  rather  taken  up  at  just  that 
moment  with  two  letters  which  had  come  in  the  after 
noon  post,  one  from  Miss  Alice  King,  in  Bar  Harbor, 
and  one  from  Lady  Evelyn  Foster,  who  was  speaking 
and  recruiting  for  The  Cause  in  Wales.  Both 
these  ladies,  at  their  several  times  of  writing,  had 
chanced  to  be  a  little  puffed  up  by  some  small  success 
to  their  endeavors,  and  had  been  quite  expansive 
in  the  warmth  of  their  elation. 

Hope  read  brief  portions  of  the  two  letters  aloud, 
and,  when  Bacon  made  no  comment,  asked  him 
outright: 

"What  do  you  think  of  it?" 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders  with  a  little  laugh. 

"I  try  not  to  think  at  all." 

She  was  a  little  annoyed  at  his  laugh,  though  it 
hadn't  been  at  all  a  sneering  or  a  jeering  laugh,  but 
rather  had  seemed  to  express  the  mental  attitude 
of  one  who  is  mildly  amused  without  caring  much. 

"That's  not  exactly  an  answer." 

"Oh!  Well,  what  do  you  want  me  to  say?  I'm 
not  going  to  quarrel  with  you  over  a  lot  of  window- 
smashing  suffragettes,  if  that's  what  you're  after." 

"The  English  women?"  she  queried.  "Yes,  they 
have  smashed  some  glass,  to  be  sure.  But  not 
until  they'd  tried  every  known  peaceful  method  for 
thirty  or  forty  years.  And  haven't  men  done  a 

[169] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

good  deal  more  than  break  windows  to  get  the  right 
to  say  how  they  shall  be  governed?  I  seem  to  re 
member  that  they  have.'* 

Bacon  looked  up  at  her,  with  a  sudden  surprise, 
and  presently  laughed  again,  but  in  another  tone. 

"You've  got  me  there!  That  certainly  is  first 
blood  to  you.  Look  here!  Do  you  mean  to  say 
you're  really  interested  in  this — this — well,  move 
ment?  Are  you?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Hope  said,  slowly.  "Miss  King 
— Aunt  Alice  King,  I  call  her — is  my  godmother,  you 
know.  She  has  talked  to  me  a  little.  And  Lady 
Evelyn  Foster  has  talked  to  me  a  good  deal.  I've 
read  more  or  less.  Once  something  happened  to 
put  me  off  the  whole  thing  frightfully.  Then  it 
began  to  come  back,  little  by  little,  and  worry  me. 
Once  your  mind  has  been  harrowed  up  I  suppose 
it  can  never  be  quite  the  same  again.  There's 
something  there  that  stirs  now  and  then,  like  a  pain 
you've  half  forgotten.  This  movement,  it's  a  big 
thing,  you  know.  Right  or  wrong,  it's  a  great  big 
thing." 

Bacon  looked  at  her  frowning,  with  a  kind  of  dis 
tress,  and  away  then  over  the  sunny  sea. 

"I  don't  like  it,"  he  said.  "I  can't  argue  it  with 
you,  because  no  doubt  you've  got  figures  and 
things  which  look  like  facts  that  you  could  bowl  me 
out  with  in  no  time.  But  I  don't  like  it,  and  I  think 
most  decent,  reasonably  intelligent  men  would  agree 
with  me.  Ask  them  and  see!"  He  turned  his  eyes 

[170] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

back  to  her.  "  We  men,  we  like  to  look  up  and — well, 
worship.  You're  better,  more  delicate  stuff  than  we 
are — halfway  between  us  and  the  angels.  You've  got 
certain  lovely  and  precious  things  about  you  to  con 
tribute  to  the  world  that  we  can't  contribute.  You 
point  the  way  to  the  stars.  Isn't  that  worth  while? 
It  seems  so  to  me." 

It  was,  in  any  case,  a  nice  way  of  putting  it. 
Mr.  Bacon  can  hardly  have  known  how  much  he  did 
for  himself  by  that  little  speech,  though  Hope  knew 
that  it  wasn't  worth  much  as  argument. 

She  looked  down  upon  him  for  a  moment,  thought 
fully,  where  he  sat  at  her  feet,  on  the  edge  of  the  brick 
terrace,  and  she  had  it  in  mind  to  ask  how  large  a 
proportion  of  the  female  population  of  the  globe  he 
thought  would  be  able  to  keep  themselves  alive  by 
pointing  the  way  to  the  stars,  but  she  felt  abruptly  a 
kind  of  apathy — a  sudden  disinclination  for  anything 
controversial.  After  all,  it  had  been  very  charming 
of  him  to  say  what  he  had  said  about  women.  She 
was  glad  he  felt  like  that.  She  was  glad  he  was  that 
kind  of  man. 

"Halfway  between  us  and  the  angels.  You  point 
the  way  to  the  stars." 

That  wasn't  much  good  to  those  toiling  thousands 
of  women  and  children  in  mines  and  mills  and  sweat 
shops,  but  it  was  good  to  her. 

She  looked  down  at  him  once  more,  and  was  aware 
in  a  new  sense  of  how  big  his  shoulders  were  and  how 
small  his  waist  and  hips.  And  the  sun  had  tanned 
12  [ 171  ] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

him  brown  and  burnt  the  ends  of  his  hair.  She 
watched  him  breathe  in  long,  steady  inhalations, 
and  for  some  extraordinary  reason  that  common 
place  act  seemed  to  her  quite  wonderful  and  thrill 
ing. 

"Let's  not  argue!"  she  begged,  presently,  in  a 
small  voice. 

And  Bacon  smiled  at  her  and  said:  "Done!  We 
won't." 

And  they  were  rather  silent  until  presently  he  got 
up  to  go.  He  said: 

"You  come  back  to  America  in  November?" 

"The  end  of  October,  I  think — Caroline  and  I. 
George  goes  a  month  before  with  little  George,  on 
account  of  school." 

He  said,  looking  at  her  reflectively:  "Of  course, 
it's  only  a  few  weeks  from  mid-August  to  November. 
But—" 

"Oh,  it's  no  time  at  all!"  she  assured  him,  with 
some  haste.  "The  end  of  summer  simply  flies." 

"And  you'll  be  hi  New  York  for  most  of  the  winter, 
I  take  it?" 

"Yes,  I  think  so.  I  haven't  looked  ahead  much. 
It's  rather  terrifying.  But  Caroline  wants  me.  I 
dare  say  I  shall  bounce  back  and  forth  between  her 
and  Aunt  Alice.  Of  course,  I  shall  want  to  be 
pretty  quiet  this  year." 

He  seemed  to  like  that  idea  of  quietude.  He 
cheered  up  over  it  visibly. 

"Well— I'm  off!" 

[172] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

They  shook  hands  without  any  lingering  over  the 
matter. 

"Don't  you  go  and  get  drowned,"  he  said.  "Not 
before  next  winter." 

And  she  promised  she  wouldn't. 

There  seemed  to  be  something  more  on  his  mind, 
and  he  hung  for  a  moment  scowling  over  it,  but 
gave  it  up  in  the  end,  looked  at  her  rather  hard,  and 
went  abruptly  away,  as  if  he  were  runr.ing  from 
temptation. 

Hope  watched  him  down  the  little  hill.  She  had 
a  moment  of  hastened  heartbeat,  of  something  like 
pain  over  the  loss  of  him.  Then  she  turned  back  to 
her  basket-chair,  in  the  shade  of  a  big  cedar  tree. 
She  was  going  to  miss  Roger  Bacon  rather  badly. 
She  realized  that.  But  she  was  not  very  certain 
about  the  kind  or  quality  of  the  regret,  and  she 
didn't  want,  just  now,  to  make  too  close  an  examina 
tion  of  it. 

She  was  going  to  miss  his  sister,  too,  for  there  had 
sprung  up  between  her  and  this  sweet-faced,  gray- 
haired  lady  one  of  those  sudden  intimacies  that  come 
out  of  true  temperamental  kinship — a  kind  of  in 
stinctive  recognition  of  common  spiritual  traits. 
Mrs.  Cartwright,  Hope  thought,  was  quite  the  finest 
nature,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  with  which  she 
had  ever  come  in  contact.  She  couldn't  conceive 
anything  hard  or  selfish  or  ungenerous  or  unchari 
table  ever  entering  Mrs.  Cartwright's  mind,  even  for 
an  instant.  It  was  impossible  to  conceive  (harking 

[173] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

back  to  her  old  touchstone)  that  Bacon's  sister 
could  ever  in  any  relation  of  life  be  unfair. 

It  was,  as  you  may  gather,  a  pretty  thorough 
going  enthusiasm — one  of  those  unreserved  admira 
tions  that  in  a  cruder  form  very  young  girls  so  often 
feel  for  older  members  of  their  sex.  But  it  was 
built  upon  a  much  sounder  foundation  than  such 
affairs  usually  have  under  them.  The  two  really 
were  very  close  indeed  in  sympathy. 

Mrs.  Cartwright  had  tears  in  her  eyes  when  she 
made  her  adieux. 

"Good-by,  little  sister!  I  wish  I  weren't  going. 
You've  been  such  a  glorious  friend!  The  nicest 
I  ever  had.  Henry  thinks  so  too,  you  know.  He 
raved  about  you  the  other  day.  He  said:  'That's 
a  nice  girl.  We  must  see  her  in  New  York."1 

Hope  laughed  over  this  unmeasured  enthusiasm  of 
Henry's,  and  Mrs.  Cartwright  laughed  too. 

"Oh,  he  mayn't  sound  like  losing  his  self-con 
trol  over  you,  but  if  you  knew  him  you'd  realize  it 
was  almost  delirium.  Henry  hates  girls.  He  has 
a  special  growl  for  them  quite  different  from  his 
other  growls.  And  for  him  actually  to  say  he  wants 
to  see  a  girl  again  is  exactly  like  getting  a  mandolin 
and  singing  under  her  window  at  night.  You  see, 
Henry  doesn't  sing.  So  you  must  let  me  look  for 
ward  to  having  you  a  lot  next  winter,  both  in  town 
and  in  the  country.  It  will  come  to  a  fight  between 
Caroline  Darnley  and  me,  but  I  don't  care.  You're 
worth  it." 

[1741 


THE    OPENING   DOOR 

So  both  her  new-found  friends  went  away,  and 
Hope  missed  them  badly,  as  she  had  known  she 
would;  but  for  all  that  the  world  remained  a  bright 
and  cheery  place,  full  of  amusing  people  and  amusing 
things  to  do. 

The  Darnleys  stayed  on  in  Trouville  through 
August,  and  a  great  many  people  came  to  Villa  Belle 
Marquise,  and  were  captivated  by  the  slim  young 
red-haired  girl  there,  who  looked  so  much  like  Diana 
in  mourning — especially  a  wicked  middle-aged  gentle 
man,  the  Comte  de  Gaillac,  who  became  quite  an 
habitue  of  the  place  (leaving  his  wickedness  in  his 
motor  outside  the  gate),  and  said  rather  pathetically 
that  a  look  at  Mile.  Standish  for  half  an  hour 
"cleansed  his  soul." 

Then  in  September  they  went  to  Venice,  where 
George  D.  installed  them  very  comfortably  and 
rather  grandly  in  the  Casa  Tiepolo,  on  the  Grand 
Canal,  and  left  them,  to  take  little  George  home  to 
school. 

To  Hope's  delight,  they  found  the  Mallows  at  the 
Danieli,  Lady  Evelyn  having  fallen  ill  from  over 
work,  and  been  ordered  south  for  a  change  of  air. 
Caroline  Darnley  found  a  good  many  other  friends 
also,  as  she  was  sure  to  do  in  this  gay  month,  and  it 
not  unnaturally  fell  out  that  Hope,  who  wanted  to  be 
quiet,  and  Lady  Evelyn  Foster,  who  had  to  be,  were 
thrown  a  good  deal  into  each  other's  society,  and 
spent  hours  of  every  day  floating  about  in  Hope's 
gondola,  or  bathing  at  the  Lido  early,  when  the  beach 

[175] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

was  deserted,  or  sitting  under  an  awning  on  Hope's 
balcony  at  the  Casa  Tiepolo. 

"That  girl's  not  going  to  make  a  suffragette  of 
you,  I  hope!"  Mrs.  Darnley  said,  one  day,  in  some 
anxiety.  Hope  laughed  without  replying,  and  her 
cousin  continued  to  be  anxious  for  almost  five 
minutes.  But  she  was  very  busy,  and  there  were 
many  things  to  think  about,  so  she  let  the  subject 
drop,  meaning  to  bring  it  up  again  later  on  when 
there  was  leisure  for  a  little  homily. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  her  ferocity  toward  Equal 
Suffrage  had  weakened  somewhat  when  she  found  it 
being  taken  up  by  such  very  nice  people  in  London — 
even  though  the  nice  people  were  as  yet  few  and  the 
movement  still  unpopular.  She  was  by  no  means 
a  snob,  but  she  had  always  been  accustomed  to  think 
what  the  people  about  her  thought  upon  ethical 
and  economic  matters,  and  if  people  like  the  Mallows 
believed  in  this  new  movement  it  couldn't  be  quite 
as  black  as  it  had  been  painted — though  still  hardly 
the  thing  for  a  young  girl.  It  would  put  the  men  off 
her  so! 

Hope,  soon  after  her  arrival  in  Venice,  had  a  com 
munication  from  Roger  Bacon,  which  he  must  have 
despatched  immediately  he  reached  New  York.  It 
was  a  picture  postal  card,  representing  the  group 
of  tall  buildings  at  the  south  end  of  Manhattan 
Island,  and  on  the  top  of  the  highest  of  these  he 
had  drawn  with  a  pen  a  little  microscopic  man  who 
seemed  to  be  gazing  under  one  lifted  hand  down  the 

1176] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

bay,  and  it  was  labeled  "R.  B.  on  the  lookout." 
It  was  not  a  side-splitting  joke,  but  it  made  her  laugh, 
and  it  recalled  Bacon  to  her  mind,  which  is  all  a 
single  picture  post  card  could  be  expected  to  do. 
Indeed,  she  was  rather  pleased  with  him  about  it. 
It  was,  she  thought,  just  the  right  sort  of  casual 
jesting  touch.  If  he  had  written  her  a  letter,  or  had 
been  serious  or  elaborate  in  any  other  way,  she  would 
have  felt  that  he  was  bearing  down  a  bit  too  hard. 
The  postal  card  was  exactly  the  thing. 

She  missed  him.  He  was  often  in  her  thoughts, 
and  so  was  his  sister — oftener,  perhaps,  than  he.  He 
had  been  a  splendid  playmate,  and  there  were  many 
pleasant,  amusing  hours  that  she  could  look  back 
upon,  and  she  looked  forward  to  many  more  of  them 
during  the  coming  winter.  But  that  was  all.  She 
was  untouched  in  any  deeper  sense. 

There  had,  perhaps,  been  moments  in  his  presence 
when  something  had  begun  to  stir  in  her — occasional 
moments.  But  they  had  come  to  nothing.  Or  so 
she  thought,  looking  back  at  them.  Besides,  her 
mind  was  occupied  with  other  things  that  had 
nothing  to  do  with  romance  or  with  young  men. 

She  met,  through  Lady  Evelyn  Poster,  a  middle- 
aged  Danish  woman  staying  at  one  of  the  smaller 
hotels,  a  Mme.  Jensen,  who  was  writing  a  history  of 
the  early  stages  of  the  Feminist  movement  the  world 
over.  She  was  a  quiet  woman,  with  gray  hair  and 
a  slight  impediment  in  her  speech;  but  when  she 
became  interested  in  what  she  was  saying,  and 

[177] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

forgot  herself  and  her  auditors,  the  impediment 
disappeared,  and  she  talked  exceedingly  well  either 
in  French  or  in  English. 

For  some  odd  reason  it  had  never  before  occurred 
to  Hope  that  the  movement  whose  manifestations 
she  had  seen  hi  New  York  and  in  London  was  a 
world-wide  movement — a  shadowy  stirring — a  gi 
gantic  chorus  of  murmurings — a  simultaneous  up 
heaval  of  women  everywhere  that  civilization  is. 
She  had  thought  of  it  as  local,  definite,  circumscribed. 

She  heard  that  the  women  of  New  Zealand  had 
had  full  suffrage  since  1893,  of  Australia  since  1902, 
of  Finland  since  1906;  that  in  Norway  three  hun 
dred  thousand  of  them  had  full  parliamentary  suf 
frage,  and  that  it  was  expected  to  be  made  universal 
in  that  country  within  a  year  or  two.  She  learned 
that  in  Denmark,  as  in  Ireland,  women  voted  for  all 
officers  except  members  of  Parliament,  and  that  they 
had  municipal  suffrage  in  any  quantity  of  places. 

It  was  a  tried  thing,  then — tried  and  proved  to  be 
either  good  or  bad.  And  yet  people  spoke  of  it  as 
such  a  visionary,  untested  experiment!  Why? 

She  asked  Lady  Evelyn,  and  Lady  Evelyn  said, 
with  some  impatience: 

"Oh,  people  are  so  stupid!  The  fact  that  a  thing 
has  been  tried  in  another  country  means  just  nothing 
to  them — except,  perhaps,  that,  being  foreign,  it 
must  be  dangerous  and  wrong.  That's  called,  I  be 
lieve,  patriotism,  and  we  sing  'God  Save  the  King* 
over  it,  and  'Britons  never,  never,  never  shall  be 

[178] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

slaves!'  You  haven't  yet  come  into  violent  contact 
with  that  stolid,  sodden  stupidity  that  masquerades 
as  patriotism,  have  you?  Well,  you  will — though  I 
believe  it's  not  as  complete  in  your  country  as  in 
mine." 

Hope  was  quite  excited  over  her  discovery.  The 
vision  of  that  vast  uprising  of  womankind  made  a 
vivid  and  unforgettable  picture  to  her;  and  yet 
when  the  Mallows  had  been  gone  for  a  fortnight, 
and  she  and  Caroline  Darnley  had  moved  north  to 
Paris,  and  were  absorbed  in  clothes,  it  had  already 
begun  to  seem  a  long  way  off. 

She  was  angry  with  herself,  and  with  what  she 
considered  a  shallow,  unstable  mind. 

"I'm  just  like  one  of  those  lizard  things,"  she 
said  to  her  cousin, in  some  dejection.  "Chameleons 
— or  is  it  carnelians?  They  take  the  color  of  what 
ever  they  happen  to  sit  on.  I'm  exactly  like  that. 
It's  very  depressing." 

But  Mrs.  Darnley  advised  her  not  to  worry,  and 
went  off  to  the  Rue  de  la  Paix  and  came  back  with 
a  string  of  pearls,  very  beautiful,  but  not  too  osten 
tatious  for  a  girl  to  wear,  which  she  presented  in 
George  D.'s  name  and  her  own.  For  it  was  Hope's 
birthday. 

She  was  nineteen. 

They  sailed  for  New  York  on  October  18th.  Mrs. 
Darnley  observed  that  Hope  spent  a  large  part  of 
two  or  three  days  reading  a  rather  fat  book.  She 
looked  at  the  title. 

[179] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

"Oh,  The  Convert!  I  didn't  know  you  had  a 
religious  turn  of  mind,  dear  child.  How  sweet  of 
you!  We  ought  to  have  gone  oftener  to  service." 

Hope  laughed,  and  went  on  reading.  But  The 
Convert  wasn't  a  religious  book  at  all. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

landed  at  mid-morning  of  a  sunny,  hazy 
J.  day  that  smelt  of  autumn,  but  was  unsea 
sonably  warm  —  an  Indian  summer  day.  George 
Darnley  was  at  the  pier  to  meet  them;  and  Miss 
Alice  King  was  with  him,  her  big,  round  spectacles 
gleaming  a  welcome  from  afar.  Hope  left  her  lug 
gage  for  the  maid  and  George  D.'s  secretary  to  clear, 
and  drove  off  with  her  godmother  to  lunch,  though 
she  was  to  stay  with  the  Darnleys. 

Miss  King,  in  a  rather  perfunctory  tone,  asked 
her  the  usual  questions  that  returning  travelers  are 
met  with.  The  voyage,  was  it  good  or  bad?  Were 
there  pleasant  people  on  board,  and  did  she  know 
any  of  them?  That  kind  of  thing.  But  once  in 
Fortieth  Street,  and  upstairs  in  Miss  King's  own 
sitting-room,  she  held  her  goddaughter  a  moment 
by  the  shoulders,  peering  at  her,  and  said: 

"You've  grown  up!  What  has  happened  to 
you?" 

"Grown  up?"  Hope  wondered.  "Nonsense!  I 
haven't.  Of  course,  I'm  nineteen  instead  of  eigh 
teen.  George  and  Caroline  gave  me  a  string  of  the 
most  heavenly  pearls."  She  went  to  a  glass  and 

[181] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

looked  into  it  with  great  interest.  "I  can't  see  that 
I'm  different.  Am  I?" 

"You've  grown  up,"  Miss  King  said  again,  and 
looked  at  her  thoughtfully.  "Well,  some  people 
do  it  suddenly.  Still—  Of  course,  you  look  very 
well.  Very  well,  indeed.  I  suppose  people  consider 
you  pretty,  don't  they?" 

"Some  do,  I  believe,"  Hope  said.  "Others,  I 
should  think,  don't,  because  I've  red  hair.  I  look 
best  in  a  bathing  maillot;  but  Caroline  would  let 
me  wear  it  only  in  the  early  morning  when  just  our 
party  was  there." 

She  was  moving  about  the  room  touching  things 
here  and  there,  and  talking,  as  it  were,  against  time. 
But  after  a  bit  she  turned  and  looked  her  godmother 
in  the  face. 

"I'm  glad  to  have  come  here — straight  from  the 
ship.  I've  been  wanting  to  talk  to  you.  Would 
you  care  to  take  me  in?" 

"Take  you  in?  Do  you  mean  let  you  live  here 
with  me?  Good  heavens,  yes!  I  should  think  so, 
child !  I  shall  be  furious  if  you  don't  spend  half  your 
time  with  me,  and  I  should  like  the  whole  of  it." 

But  Hope  shook  her  head. 

"No,  I  don't  mean  quite  that.  .  .  .  Have  you  ever 
heard  of  Lord  Mallow's  daughter,  Lady  Evelyn 
Foster,  in  London?" 

"Of  course  I  have!"  said  Miss  King,  promptly. 
"She's  one  of  the  best  workers  The  Cause  has  got 
in  all  England." 

[182] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"Well,  she's  a  very  good  friend  of  mine.  I've 
talked  to  her  rather  a  lot — and  to  other  people,  too. 
And  I've  been  reading  and  thinking.  I  want  to 
know  more.  Would  you  care  to  take  me  under 
your  wing?  Put  me  to  work?  .  .  .  Oh  dear!  what's 
the  matter?" 

She  halted  rather  abruptly,  for  Miss  King's  face 
was  slightly  contorted  and  tears  were  running  down 
it.  She  dabbed  at  them  with  an  unready  handker 
chief  as  if  she  hardly  knew  how  to  deal  with  tears. 

Hope  ran  to  her  and  tried  to  soothe  her.  She 
couldn't  imagine  what  was  wrong,  and  it  came  to 
her  presently,  with  a  kind  of  half-ludicrous  shock, 
that  Miss  King  was  weeping  for  joy. 

"Don't  mind  me!  I'm  a  silly  old  fool.  Near 
my  dotage,  I  should  think.  Little  things  upset  me 
sometimes.  Oh,  what's  the  use  of  pretending? 
This  isn't  a  little  thing.  It's  what  I've  hoped  and 
prayed  for,  and  didn't  dare  expect.  .  .  .  You 
see,  I've  no  child  of  my  own.  You're  all  I've  got, 
my  dear.  And  I  had  hoped  you'd  come  into  the — 
into  the  fold.  I  talk  like  a  Salvation  Army  man  on 
a  street  corner,  I  know.  But  never  you  mind !  I'm 
an  old  woman,  and  I've  hardly  shed  a  tear  in  twenty 
years.  I  shall  cry  as  long  as  I  want  to.  ...  To 
think  of  your  coming  of  your  own  accord!  Asking 
— actually  asking  to  be  taken  under  my  wing.  I 
should  say,  'Lord,  now  lettest  Thou  Thy  servant 
depart  in  peace!'  if  I  weren't  much  too  busy  to 
think  of  departing.  .  .  .  Somebody  of  my  own  to 

[183] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

carry  on  the  work  when  I'm  gone!  Oh,  dear  me! 
I'm  getting  hysterical;  but  it's  worth  it." 

She  blinked  through  her  tears  at  her  goddaughter 
and  wagged  her  gray  head  sorrowfully. 

"If  the  people  who  think  I'm  a  hard-headed, 
callous  old  schemer  could  see  me  now,  they'd  die  of 
astonishment,  wouldn't  they?  I  don't  care." 

She  mopped  away  the  last  of  those  unaccustomed 
manifestations  of  emotion,  and  sat  regarding  the 
girl  with  a  happy,  reflective  eye. 

"So  that's  what  has  made  you  grow  up?  You've 
been  thinking.  Yes.  .  .  .  Well,  I'll  put  you  to  work, 
and  thank  God  for  the  chance.  I'd  have  tried  it 
months  ago,  when  you  were  staying  here  in  the 
spring.  I'd  have  tried  to  get  you  interested  then, 
but  you  seemed  such  a  child — and  I  was  so  fright 
fully  busy.  Now — you  come  to  me  of  your  own 
will!  That's  a  thousand  times  better,  isn't  it?  I 
think  I  should  like  to  dance  and  sing.  Indeed,  I'll 
put  you  to  work  if  you  want  me  to.  You'll  have  to 
begin  at  the  bottom,  and  you'll  loathe  it  for  a  time 
—unless  you've  a  tougher  skin  than  I  think.  But 
you'll  get  used  to  it  after  a  bit,  as  they  all  do." 

"I  ought  to  tell  you,"  Hope  said,  "that  I'm  not 
altogether  sure  of  myself.  I'm  just  feeling  my  way. 
I  mayn't  be  able  to  go  on  with  it.  I  mayn't  even 
want  to." 

But  Miss  King  emitted  a  sound  like  a  valiant  snort. 

"I'll  see  to  that !    Don't  you  be  afraid !" 

They  lunched  together,  just  the  two  of  them  at 

[184] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

table,  talking  The  Cause — a  kind  of  preliminary  lesson 
on  the  local  organizations  for  Equal  Suffrage,  and 
how  they  went  about  their  work.  It  all  sounded 
very  fine  and  well  articulated  and  efficient;  for  Miss 
King,  though  as  single-hearted  and  wellnigh  fanatical 
a  worker  as  the  movement  had  ever  possessed,  was 
neither  emotional  in  manner  nor  grasping  in  argu 
ment.  She  had,  by  nature,  a  kind  of  grim  humor, 
and  she  was  perfectly  ready  to  concede  such  weak 
nesses  or  shortcomings  as  she  could  see  in  her  cause. 
She  was  very  practical,  too — or  seemed  so.  She 
wasted  no  time  over  beautiful  dreams.  She  saw 
definite,  well-diagnosed  disorders  in  the  bodies 
economic  and  politic,  and  she  had  plain  remedies 
for  them — remedies  which  neither  demanded  nor 
expected  any  dubious  popular  emotionalism  to  help 
them  out.  She  had  singularly  few  illusions.  She 
dealt  with  facts  and  with  reasonable  probabilities; 
and  Hope,  listening  with  great  care,  felt  a  new  vast 
respect  for  her  godmother,  and  wondered  in  a  kind 
of  puzzled  dismay  how  she  could  ever  have  been 
such  a  little  fool  as  to  doubt  her. 

Before  she  left  the  house  she  went  in  to  speak  to 
Miss  Sprague,  the  secretary,  who  jumped  up  at 
once  to  meet  her,  scattering  a  great  quantity  of 
typed  sheets  of  paper  on  the  floor.  Miss  Sprague 
seemed  quite  in  what  is  called  a  "frame  of  mind" 
with  excitement  and  pleasure,  and  kept  saying  how 
good  it  was  of  Miss  Standish  to  remember  her  and 
come  in. 

[185] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Hope,  on  a  sudden  impulse,  kissed  her  on  both 
cheeks,  and  the  secretary  turned  a  very  becoming 
pink,  and  tears  came  in  her  eyes. 

"You  look  so  well!"  she  cried.  "And  so  lovely! 
Lovelier  than  ever.  I  shouldn't  have  thought  any 
body  could.  Not  if  they'd  tried  ever  so.  ...  And 
now  I  suppose  you'll  be  *  coming  out* — do  they  still 
call  it  that? — and  having  the  gayest  kind  of  a  winter, 
and  turning  everybody's  head  right  off  his  shoulders." 

She  seemed  to  remember  all  at  once  that  the  girl 
was  in  mourning,  for  she  broke  off  and  got  pinker 
still  and  began  to  apologize. 

"I'm  so  sorry.  I  didn't  think.  It  was  very 
stupid  of  me.  It's  just — that  you  seem  to  belong 
so  to  happiness  and  gaiety — all  that  sort  of  thing. 
One  can't  imagine  you  without  it.  At  least,  I 
shouldn't  like  to." 

Hope  said:  "Oh,  all  that.  No,  not  this  winter, 
I  suppose.  Perhaps  I  sha'n't  ever  come  out  at  all 
formally.  Just  slip  out  in  a  quiet  way  next  year — 
if  I  ever  do  anything  about  it  at  all.  I  may  be  too 
busy.  You  see,  I'm  going  to  work.  My  godmother 
is  going  to  take  me  under  her  wing  and  put  me  to 
work  for  The  Cause." 

"  You!"  said  the  secretary,  and  looked  aghast  and 
as  if  she  would  like  to  cry.  "Fern,  Miss  Standish? 
Oh,  why?  Why?  Aren't  there  enough  of  us  with 
out  dragging  you  into  it — a  beautiful  young  lady 
like  you?  It  seems  dreadful  to  me.  It  seems 
wicked.  Oh,  I'm  so  sorry!" 

[186] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Hope  stared  at  her  in  amazement. 

"But,  good  heavens,  why  not?  Don't  you  believe 
in  Equal  Suffrage?" 

"Yes,"  said  the  secretary,  dabbing  at  her  eyes. 
"Of  course  I  do,  or  I  shouldn't  be  at  work  here  in 
this  room.  It's  hard  work.  Of  course  I  believe  in 
it.  I  think  it's  the  most  important  thing  there  is 
in  the  world  to-day.  But —  Oh,  Miss  Standish,  I 
hate  to  think  of  you  using  up  your  youth  and  beauty 
and — and  everything  in  doing  things  that  a  thousand 
other  women  could  do  just  as  well." 

"It  doesn't  seem  to  me  that  youth  and  all  the  rest 
of  it  matters  much,"  Hope  said.  "Of  course,  it's 
very,  very  sweet  of  you  to  put  it  like  that,  and  you're 
a  great  dear;  but  aren't  you  exaggerating  the  value 
of — just  looks?" 

"No!"  insisted  the  secretary,  with  a  kind  of  sad 
stubbornness.  "No,  I'm  not.  Beauty  and  charm 
and  sweetness  and — love  are  too  important  to  ex 
aggerate.  They're  the  things  that  make  life  won 
derful.  They're  like  pictures  and  music  and  poetry. 
We  don't  use  beautiful  pictures  to  wrap  up  parcels 
with,  or  to  make  canvas  bags  out  of,  or  for  a  hundred 
other  practical  work-a-day  purposes.  We  hang 
them  on  the  wall,  and  they  give  rest  and  delight  and 
refreshment  to  hundreds  of  tired  souls.  Ah,  Miss 
Standish,  you're  like  that — people  like  you.  You're 
the  pictures  and  music  of  the  world.  You're  the 
lovely  things  that  make  life  worth  living.  What 
would  become  of  us  if  all  of  you  should  leave  your 

13  [187] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

places  and  turn  yourselves  into  common  drudges— 
or  even  into  uncommon  drudges — splendid  workers 
like  Miss  King!  What  should  we  have  to  live  for, 
we  others?" 

Hope  was  dreadfully  embarrassed.  She  liked 
admiration  and  flattery  as  well  as  most  people  do, 
but  this  admiration  of  Miss  Sprague's  was  so  very 
direct.  She  couldn't  think  of  anything  to  say  back 
to  it.  It  was  sincere,  too;  no  doubt  of  that!  The 
woman  meant  rather  terribly  what  she  said,  and 
that  made  it  all  the  harder  to  answer.  She  said 
feebly: 

"Oh,  that's  so  dear  and — splendid  of  you!  I  wish 
I  really  were  all  you  think.  But  I'm  sure  you're 
quite  wrong,  both  about  me  and  about  the  rest. 
If  a  girl  is — is  attractive  in  any  way,  surely  she  can 
use  her  attractiveness  just  as  well  among  one  kind 
of  people  as  among  another.  Surely  she  can  put 
her  attractiveness  to  work.  Can't  she?" 

She  began  to  be  a  bit  impatient,  for  she  had  come 
in  a  fine  glow  of  enthusiasm  from  her  luncheon 
with  Aunt  Alice,  and  this  new,  awkward  point  of 
view  annoyed  her.  She  frowned  a  little;  and  Miss 
Sprague  seemed  to  see  the  frown  and  to  retire,  as  it 
were,  before  it,  drooping  her  eyes  and  murmuring 
something  apologetic. 

Hope  made  as  if  to  go,  trying  hard  to  think  just 
what  it  was  she  had  come  into  the  secretary's  room 
for.  Then  she  remembered  and  turned  back. 

"Oh  yes!    I  wanted  to  ask  you  about  that — that 

[188] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

young  woman  you  took  me  to  see.  You  remem 
ber?" 

"Yes,"  said  Miss  Sprague.  "Olga  Rabinova.  I 
remember."  She  looked  up,  but  her  visitor's  eyes 
were  averted. 

"I  wanted  to  know  if  any  one  could  do  anything 
for  her?  She  seemed  to  be  poor.  And  there  was 
the  little  baby.  Winter's  coming  on  and  —  I 
should  like  to  do  something  for  her,  if  I  could.  I've 
rather  a  good  deal  of  money  now  that  I'm  alone 
in  the  world." 

"I  don't  quite  know,"  Miss  Sprague  said,  slowly. 
"Olga  gets  on  somehow — from  hand  to  mouth — 
or  at  least  she  has  got  on  so  far.  I've  heard  her  say 
once  or  twice  that  she  wished  she  had  time  to  do 
better  work,  such  as  fine  embroidery.  She's  rather 
a  genius  at  it,  I  believe;  and  of  course  if  she  could 
get  a  start  and  a  market,  she  could  do  much  better 
than  she's  doing  now.  I'll  try  to  find  out,  if  you'd 
like  me  to." 

"Thanks!  That's  very,  very  good  of  you.  I'm  a 
nuisance,  I  suppose,  but  you're  a  dear,  and  I'm  glad 
we  shall  be  seeing  a  lot  of  each  other  in  the  future." 
She  kissed  Miss  Sprague  again,  and  patted  her  on 
the  cheek,  and  ran  out  of  the  room  before  the  secre 
tary  could  get  her  breath  to  speak. 

She  had  asked  no  question  about  young  Mr. 
Traill,  and  she  didn't  mean  to.  Let  him  rest  in  his 
metaphorical  grave,  where  he  had  now  lain  so  long 
and  so  quietly.  She  had  been  able  to  keep  him  out 

[189] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

of  her  head  almost  altogether  during  the  past  few 
months.  Various  trends  of  reminiscent  thought 
had,  from  time  to  time,  led  her  back  across  the  fields 
they  had  together  trodden,  but  she  had  learned  to 
walk  round  that  especial  place  of  sepulture  with 
averted  eyes  and  a  blank  mind. 

She  went  up  to  the  house  facing  the  Park, 
where  she  found  Caroline  Darnley  surrounded  by  a 
group  of  rather  noisy  friends. 

"You've  got  something  like  a  ton  of  roses  up  in 
your  room,  with  a  card,"  her  cousin  said  to  her.  "I 
have  some  too,  but  only  half  a  ton.  Angele  has 
unpacked  you,  and  you'll  find  yourself  comfortable, 
I  think.  I'll  come  to  you  presently." 

Hope  went  at  once  upstairs,  where  she  found  the 
ton  of  roses  put  in  water  about  the  pair  of  pretty 
rooms  she  was  to  occupy.  She  had  a  strong  sus 
picion  about  the  card,  which  proved  to  be  well 
founded,  and  she  stood  with  the  bit  of  pasteboard 
in  her  hands,  frowning  at  Mr.  Bacon's  flowers  in 
some  concern. 

He  had  been  almost  as  well  hidden  away  in  her 
mind  as  Traill.  Almost,  not  quite.  For  he  rep 
resented  something  very  pleasant  indeed  in  her 
life — ten  days  of  comradeship  and  fun,  slightly 
colored  by  sentiment  (not  to  mention  those  earlier 
years  of  hero  worship).  But  he  and  his  roses  repre 
sented  more  than  that  as  she  suddenly  faced  them  on 
this  day  (faced  the  one  in  a  literal,  the  other  in  a 
figurative  sense).  They  represented — or  she  was 

[190] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

afraid  they  did — a  complication  not  allowed  for  in 
her  new  plans.  She  said,  standing  in  her  bedroom 
and  twisting  Mr.  Roger  Bacon's  card  between  her 
fingers : 

"Oh,  dear!  this  is  going  to  mix  things  up  fright 
fully.  I  wish  he  hadn't." 

.  .  .  Hadn't  sent  the  roses,  probably,  but  she  did 
not  explain.  However,  he  had  sent  a  great  lot  of 
them — a  garden  of  roses — a  highly  significant  hint 
of  his  determination  to  "follow  up." 

"He's  splendid!"  Hope  said,  still  aloud,  "and  I 
like  him  awfully;  and  if  there  was  anybody,  he'd  be 
the  one,  I  suppose.  But  he  just  mustn't  come 
bothering.  He  truly  mustn't." 

She  wrote  him  a  cordial  note  to  thank  him  for  the 
roses,  but  was  vague  about  their  meeting.  She 
hoped  he  would  "look  in  one  day."  And  he  did — 
nothing  daunted  —  the  next  day  but  one.  Hope 
wasn't  in  the  house,  but  luckily  Mrs.  Darnley,  re 
turning  from  her  drive,  encountered  him  at  the  door 
and  took  him  in  for  tea. 

They  talked  for  some  time  about  indifferent  mat 
ters:  what  each  had  done  since  August;  which 
friends  were  already  in  town,  and  which  hadn't 
yet  arrived;  what  the  chances  were  for  a  good 
opera  season — commonplace  November  talk.  Then 
Bacon  took  a  short  breath  and  asked: 

"How  is  Miss  Standish?" 

Caroline  Darnley,  with  a  slightly  clouded  brow, 
said  her  cousin  was  well  enough. 

[191] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"Oh,  very  well,  indeed,  as  a  matter  of  fact.  She 
ought  to  be  in  at  any  moment.  What  time  is  it — 
quarter  to  six?  That's  late  for  her." 

The  young  man  made  no  comment,  and  after  a 
pause  she  went  on  to  explain  her  clouded  brow. 

"To  tell  the  truth,  I'm  just  a  little  worried  about 
an  idea  Hope  has  got  of  going  in  for  Woman  Suffrage. 
Alice  King  (you  know  her,  don't  you?  Hope's 
godmother),  she's  at  the  bottom  of  it,  of  course. 
She  must  have  started  the  child's  mind  in  that 
direction,  but  Evelyn  Foster,  Lord  Mallow's  girl, 
went  on  with  it.  Hope  and  she  became  great  pals, 
and,  I  dare  say,  talked  nothing  but  this  unsexing 
rubbish  from  morning  to  night." 

"I  know,"  said  Roger  Bacon.  "Miss  Standish 
spoke  to  me  of  Lady  Evelyn  Foster,  in  Trouville." 

"Well,  they  met  again  in  Venice — there  were  some 
other  women,  too,  I  believe.  And  now  the  absurd 
brat  has  asked  Alice  King  to  put  her  to  work  in  her 
own  organization — Alice  King's,  I  mean.  I  can't 
think,"  said  the  distracted  lady,  setting  her  cup 
down  with  quite  a  crash — "I  can't  think  what  the 
younger  generation  is  coming  to.  Hope  isn't  the 
only  one,  you  know.  Ethel  Farnsworth  came  in 
here  yesterday  with  her  mother  and  an  armful  of 
tracts — tracts!  *  Woman  Suffrage — What  It  Is'; 
'Woman  Suffrage— What  It  Isn't';  'The  New  Era'; 
'The  March  of  the  Amazons';  'Questions  and 
Objections  Answered';  'What  Twenty  College  Presi 
dents  Say  of  Woman  Suffrage.'  She  wanted  to 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

leave  them  for  me  to  read.  For  me!  Dolly  Pierson 
has  joined  the  army,  and  her  husband  is  furious; 
and  that  pretty  Hale  girl  is  studying  elocution,  so 
that  she  can  speak  from  platforms." 

Roger  Bacon  laughed. 

"Aren't  you  taking  it  a  bit  too  seriously?,  The 
thing's  a  fad  just  now,  and  of  course  a  lot  of  women 
and  girls  will  go  in  for  it — until  it  bores  them.  But 
I  shouldn't  be  alarmed  if  I  were  you.  It  seems 
to  me  just  a  temporary  fashionable  amusement.  It 
used  to  be  Settlement  Work;  now  it's  Votes  for 
Women.  Let  'em  have  their  fling.  That's  what  I 
said  to  Ned  Pierson  to-day  at  lunch.  He  was  rather 
low  in  his  mind  about  Dolly.  I  said:  'Let  her  go! 
Cheer  her  on!  Encourage  her  all  you  can!  She'll 
chuck  it  in  six  months,  if  not  in  three.'  He  seemed 
to  think  that  was  a  good  idea." 

"Well,"  said  Mrs.  Darnley,  doubtfully,  "perhaps 
it  is.  Let's  hope  so,  anyhow!  I  wish  you'd  talk  to 
Hope." 

And  Bacon  said  he  would  like  nothing  better. 

"Only  I've  no  idea  of  talking  to  her  about  her 
chief  fad.  That  would  be  suicide.  She'd  be  down 
on  me  in  a  moment,  and  I  want  her  to  like  me."  He 
looked  across  at  his  hostess  seriously.  "I  want  it 
very  much,  Mrs.  Darnley." 

Caroline  Darnley  nodded  her  head. 

"I  thought  you  did,  and  I'm  glad.  Of  course, 
she's  very  young — nineteen.  But  she's  alone  in  the 
world,  poor  lamb,  and  ought  to  marry  and  have  a 

[193] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

home.  George  and  I  want  her  here  just  as  much 
and  as  long  as  she'll  stay;  and  so,  no  doubt,  does 
Alice  King.  But  that's  not  quite  the  same  as  having 
a  home  and  an  immediate  family.  She'll  have  to 
be  rather  quiet  this  winter,  too,  as  she's  in  mourn 
ing;  but  I  think  she'll  dine  when  we  have  people 
here,  and  go  out  more  or  less,  though  not  to  dancing 
parties.  So  you'll  have  a  very  good  chance  at  her 
if  you  care  to  take  it.  Much  better  than  if  she 
were  a  gay  debutante  with  her  head  turned  by  her 
first  season." 

"You  wish  me  well,  then?"  he  asked. 

And  Mrs.  Darnley  said,  frankly:  "Yes,  Roger,  I 
do.  There's  no  one  I  should  be  better  pleased  with. 
And  George,  too,  I'm  sure.  Try  your  luck,  by  all 
means!  But  don't  rush  the  child.  I'm  quite  cer 
tain  that's  not  the  way." 

He  was  quite  certain,  too,  and  said  so. 

"I'll  go  as  slowly  as  I  can,  believe  me.  Though 
it  won't  be  easy.  Perhaps  she'll  settle  the  matter 
of  speed  herself  by  not  letting  me  'go*  at  all — I  wish 
I  knew.  She  was  very  nice  to  me  at  Deauville, 
though  just  in  a  friendly  way." 

"Friendship  is  a  good  beginning,"  said  Mrs. 
Darnley,  sagely,  "if  it  hasn't  gone  on  too  long.  It 
teaches  you  what  the  other  person's  likes  and  dis 
likes  are,  at  least,  and  that's  something." 

She  asked  him  to  dinner  for  the  following  Thurs 
day,  and  then  sent  him  off,  as  it  was  after  six.  Hope 
hadn't  come  in,  and  he  had  to  go  without  seeing  her. 


CHAPTER  XV 

HOPE  lunched  every  day  with  Miss  King — 
sometimes  alone,  sometimes  with  others  at  the 
table  —  and  absorbed  wisdom  with  avid  ears.  In 
the  mornings  she  read  all  the  recent  books  and 
pamphlets  on  the  subject  of  Woman  Suffrage,  or 
sat  with  Miss  Sprague,  the  secretary,  going  over  the 
day's  post.  And  in  the  afternoons  she  went  "dis 
trict  canvassing"  with  a  certain  Miss  Scholl. 

It  was  a  little  unfortunate  that  this  particular 
lady  should  have  been  chosen  as  her  guide  and 
exemplar,  for  the  two  were  temperamentally  so  un 
sympathetic  that  they  could  never,  by  any  possible 
chance,  have  understood  each  other.  Hope  would 
have  liked  to  tell  Miss  King  so,  but  that  seemed  a 
rather  ungrateful  thing  to  do  just  at  the  outset.  It 
seemed  like  criticism,  and  she  hadn't  the  least  desire 
to  criticize  this  valiant  and  astonishingly  efficient 
lady  even  if  there  had  been  anything  about  her  to 
criticize.  She  worked  hard  and  well.  She  had  an 
appetite  for  work — a  passion  for  it.  She  burned, 
just  as  Miss  King  burned,  with  a  white  fire.  But 
there  was  a  difference.  The  Homburg  hat  with  its 
one  little  stiff  feather,  the  severe  skirt  and  jacket, 

[195] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

the  uncompromising  cast  of  countenance  were  ac 
curate  symbols  of  what  lay  (or  rather  stood  erect) 
within.  She  was  a  warrior  of  iron,  Miss  Scholl  was; 
and  Hope  couldn't  like  iron  women,  not  if  she  tried 
ever  so. 

She  admired  her,  though.  She  was  quite  pros 
trate  with  admiration  over  the  metallic  adequacy 
with  which  she  met  the  shrewish  or  indifferent  or 
amused  or  sullen  women  of  the  tenements  they  visited 
together.  She  took  in  the  peculiar  character  of 
each  instantly,  and  used  just  the  right  arguments, 
gave  just  the  right  answers  to  question  or  objection. 
There  was  no  pretense  of  humanity  or  sisterhood 
about  it.  She  was  an  excellent  machine  designed 
to  convey  information. 

Hope  was  depressed  without  knowing  exactly  why. 

Furthermore,  she  hated  this  feature  of  the  work 
with  a  surprising  bitterness,  even  though  she  recog 
nized  its  value.  Every  fiber  of  her  being  protested 
each  time  she  climbed  the  steps  of  a  house  in  the 
wake  of  the  unhesitating  Miss  Scholl,  each  time  she 
stood  outside  a  door  and  rang  or  knocked.  It 
seemed  such  a  dreadful  invasion  of  the  privacy  of 
those  humble  folk!  What  right  had  one  to  go 
bearing  unrest  among  them? 

And  sometimes,  though  not  as  often  as  one  might 
have  expected,  there  was  hostility  to  be  met  and 
overcome — or  fled  from.  And  demands  as  to  why 
fine  ladies  couldn't  stay  at  home  where  they  be 
longed.  And  sneers,  and  even  insults. 

[196] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

She  came  home  more  than  once  trembling,  and 
wept  alone  in  her  room,  but  afterward  clenched 
her  hands  and  tried  to  laugh  at  herself  for  a  weak 
fool.  She  thought  of  Evelyn  Foster,  who  had  more 
than  once  faced  a  savage  hooting  mob  and  talked 
it  into  quiet.  She  thought  of  those  others  who  had 
left  comfortable  homes  to  commit  acts  of  violence 
abhorrent  to  them,  and  had  served  prison  terms  for 
it.  What  was  district  canvassing  and  an  occasional 
outburst  from  a  badgered  tenement-dweller  beside 
this  picture  of  heroism? 

Then  came  the  evening  on  which  Roger  Bacon 
dined  at  the  Darnleys'. 

She  came  in  at  five,  dead-tired,  and  nervous,  and 
discouraged,  for  the  afternoon's  visiting  hadn't  gone 
well  at  all.  Mrs.  Darnley  was  not  visible,  but  her 
secretary,  Miss  Bligh,  had  left  a  card  on  Hope's 
dressing-table  with  the  list  of  dinner  guests  for  that 
evening.  And  Roger  Bacon's  name  (like  Abou 
ben  Adhem's)  led  all  the  rest. 

She  decided  that  she  was  glad — quite  surprisingly 
glad.  It  would  take  her  out  of  herself  and  her 
worries.  She  had  been  consciously  avoiding  him 
(dodging  the  man,  as  it  were) — avoiding  even  the 
mention  of  his  name  to  her  cousin ;  but  now,  through 
no  act  of  her  own,  she  was  to  see  him  once  more. 
And  she  was  glad. 

She  was  full  of  a  sudden  passionate  longing  for  the 
sort  of  life  that  his  name  suggested  to  her:  a  life 

[197] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

without  serious  thought  or  anxiety  or  responsibility 
or  ungrateful  tasks;  a  life  free  of  the  haunting  vision 
of  those  toiling  millions  of  women  and  children 
whose  fate  cried  out  to  be  ameliorated;  a  life  of 
healthy  fun  and  ease,  and  beautiful  things,  and 
gracious  pleasant  people — and  something  deep  and 
sweet  and  stirring  that  might  in  the  end  turn  out 
to  be  love. 

That  was  a  craven,  selfish  thought,  of  course,  and 
very  unworthy,  but  she  let  herself  sink  down  into 
it  for  a  moment,  as  if  it  had  been  perfumed  water. 

She  remembered  how  he  had  looked  as  he  went 
away  from  her  last  August,  walking  down  that  hill 
under  the  pines  at  Deauville,  very  tall  and  strong  and 
handsome.  She  remembered  words  he  had  spoken. 

".  .  .  Halfway  between  us  and  the  angels.  .  .  . 
You  point  the  way  to  the  stars.  Isn't  that  good 
enough  for  you?  It  seems  so  to  me." 

She  smiled  over  that.     It  was  a  nice  thing  to  say. 

Meanwhile  she  was  very,  very  tired.  She  lay 
down  and  slept  until  dressing  time. 

He  said  to  her: 

"So  you  didn't  go  and  get  drowned?" 

"No.  You  told  me  I  mustn't.  I  swam  up  and 
down  instead  of  straight  out  to  sea.  Ask  George 
Darnley  if  I  wasn't  good!" 

He  was  so  very  nice  about  taking  the  right  tone, 
she  thought.  He  began  in  the  same  strain  of  friendly 
banter  they  had  used  together  at  Deauville.  It  was 

[198] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

as  if  they  had  parted  under  those  pine  trees  only 
yesterday.  And  he  might  so  easily  have  been  sen 
timental!  She  had  rather  expected  him  to  be,  and 
was,  as  one  might  say,  braced  for  it. 

He  looked  very  well,  indeed — as  brown  as  if  he 
had  been  in  the  tropics  instead  of  playing  tennis  at 
Newport.  He  kept  that  brown  out-of-door  look  all 
winter  long,  as  she  discovered  later.  He  seemed  to 
have  become  permanently  weather-beaten  in  those 
years  of  rowing  at  New  Haven.  She  told  him  that 
he  looked  as  if  his  strength  and  appetite  were  unim 
paired;  and  he  said,  smiling,  that  she  didn't  seem  to 
have  fallen  off  much,  either. 

"You  look  a  little  solemn,  though.  I  can't  help 
seeing  that." 

"Oh,  well,  it  has  been  a  rather  trying  day. 
You  see  I'm  nowadays  what  George  calls  'an  honest 
workin'  gell,'  and  sometimes  the  work  doesn't  go 
as  it  should." 

Bacon  said  something  under  his  breath,  looking 
all  at  once  very  fierce  indeed.  She  asked  him  what 
it  was,  and  he  woiddn't  tell. 

"No!  Never  mind.  It's  not  worth  repeating. 
But  I'll  tell  you  something  else  that's  not  worth 
while,  either."  He  still  looked  angry.  "There's  no 
work  in  the  world  that's  worth  your  teasing  your 
self  to  pieces  over.  If  anybody  says  there  is,  she 
ought  to  be  hanged.  And  may  I  be  there  to  pull 
the  rope!" 

"That's  rather  nice  and  foolish  of  you  together," 

[199] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Hope  said,  when,  after  a  moment,  she  had  recovered 
from  her  surprise  at  his  sudden  savagery.  It  was 
nice,  she  reflected.  It  was  the  absurd  thorough 
going  high-flown  sort  of  thing  that  men  said — and 
doubtless  meant — in  a  more  chivalric  age.  Roger 
Bacon  meant  it,  too.  She  was  pretty  sure  of  that, 
and  the  thought  gave  her  quite  a  little  warm-all-over 
glow. 

"It  is  foolish,  of  course!"  she  insisted.  "There 
are  thousands  of  kinds  of  work  that  are  worth  my 
tearing  myself  to  pieces  over — to  say  nothing  of  just 
getting  a  little  tired  and  discouraged  about  oc 
casionally  when  things  go  wrong.  To  make  a  jump 
from  little  things  to  big  ones,  you  wouldn't  have 
approved  at  all  of  martyrdom,  would  you — not  if 
you'd  happened  to  know  one  of  the  martyrs?" 

"I'll  dodge  that,"  he  said,  after  a  moment's 
thought.  "But  I  should  like  to  point  out  that 
martyrs  aren't  very  badly  needed  nowadays." 

"Oh,  aren't  they?  How  about  certain  women 
in  London  who  are  just  coming  out  of  prison  this 
week?" 

He  shook  his  head. 

"I  can't  follow  you  into  that.  And,  besides,  this 
isn't  London.  The  thing  is  easier  here.  People 
don't  care  so  much.  The  opposition  is  nothing  like 
so  savage.  Besides —  Oh,  well,  the  point  seems 
to  me  to  be  that  some  people  make  better  martyrs 
than  anything  else.  They're  more  useful  as  sacri 
fices  for  a  cause  than  their  lives  could  be  if  they  lived 

[200] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

them  out  normally.  Other  people  aren't.  Other 
people's  lives  are  too — too — valuable  in  other  ways. 
.  .  .  You're  one  of  the  other  people,  you  know.  I 
can't — I  don't  like  to  think  of  you  wearing  yourself 
out  in  work  that  somebody  else  who  hasn't  your — 
personality  could  do  quite  as  well." 

That  was  oddly  like  what  Miss  Sprague  had  said. 

Hope  looked  at  him  with  a  little  laugh  of  dis 
tress. 

"Oh,  dear!  You're  so  wrong!  And  it's  such  a 
long  story!  Let's  not  talk  about  it.  Anyhow,  I 
was  a  fool  to  say  what  I  did  about  being  tired  and 
discouraged.  Tired,  perhaps,  sometimes.  Almost 
as  tired  as  if  I'd  played  three  sets  of  tennis.  But 
discouraged?  No.  That  was  silly  of  me." 

"All  right!"  he  agreed,  readily.  "I'm  wrong. 
Let's  talk  about  something  else."  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  he  was  glad  to  change  the  subject,  for  he  hadn't 
meant  to  take  it  up  or  to  be  led  into  it.  It  had 
happened  before  he  realized  what  was  happening. 
But  he  would  have  been  astonished  and  delighted 
if  he  could  have  known  how  that  somewhat  romantic 
point  of  view  of  his  had  pleased  the  girl  he  so  much 
wanted  to  please.  He  thought  he  had  hurt  his  cause, 
but  he  hadn't.  He  had  helped  it. 

The  traditional  instinct  of  all  womankind  was  in 
her,  and  she  was  glad  he  felt  like  that.  She  re 
joiced  guiltily  in  his  setting  her  personal  comfort 
above  the  world's  well-being.  She  felt  rather  like 
a  mediaeval  lady,  in  absurd  clothes,  with  her  hair 

[201] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

down  her  back;  and  she  thought  Bacon  looked  very 
well  indeed  in  armor. 

She  would  have  liked  to  lure  him  on  just  a  little 
and  see  what  more  he  would  say,  for  she  felt  the 
need,  that  day,  of  petting  and  of  being  made  much 
of.  But  the  man  on  her  other  side  spoke  to  her, 
and  she  had  only  an  occasional  further  word  with 
Bacon  until  the  ladies  went  out. 

In  the  drawing-room,  over  their  coffee,  an  ex 
ceedingly  pretty  young  woman  with  yellow  hair, 
a  red  sulky  mouth,  and  the  manner  of  a  slightly 
insane  drill  sergeant  backed  her  into  a  corner  and, 
as  it  were,  pinned  her  to  the  wall. 

"I've  been  hearing  all  about  you,'*  said  this 
peculiar  lady,  "from  George  Darnley.  He'd  talk 
of  nothing  else  all  through  dinner.  But  I  didn't 
mind — Ktimmel,  please!  Oh,  isn't  there  any?  Well, 
green  chartreuse  then. — I  didn't  mind,  because  you 
look  interesting.  It's  too  bad  you're  in  mourning. 
With  your  looks  you'd  have  made  a  tremendous  hit 
this  winter.  It's  about  time  for  a  new  beauty — if 
she's  a  quite  authentic  one." 

"Oh,  that's  very  good  of  you!"  Hope  said.  "But 
I'm  afraid  I  don't  care  very  much  about  making  a 
hit."  Then  she  took  it  back.  "Yes,  I  do,  too. 
That  was  a  lie.  I  think  it  would  be  splendid.  But 
it  mightn't  come  off,  you  see.  So  probably  it's 
just  as  well  I  am  in  mourning.  Besides,  I'm  inter 
ested  in  something  else." 

"That's  what  I  wanted  to  talk  to  you  about!" 

[202] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

said  the  eccentric  lady,  moving  suddenly  in  her 
chair.  She  seemed  to  have  some  odd  disease  of  the 
nerves. 

"I'm  interested  in  it  too.  Oh!  You  don't  know 
who  I  am,  do  you?  Dolly  Pierson.  My  husband 
sat  next  you  at  dinner.  He's  frightfully  sick  over 
my  suffrage  work." 

"That  must  make  things  rather  difficult,  I  should 
think,"  said  Hope. 

But  Mrs.  Pierson  stared  at  her  without  seeming 
to  have  heard. 

"  He  says  it  makes  us  ridiculous,  and  that  men  chaff 
him  about  it  in  his  clubs,  and  ask  him  why  he  isn't 
at  home  minding  the  baby  while  I  go  out  to  make 
speeches.  Of  course  the  real  truth  is  he's  afraid. 
They're  all  afraid,  all  the  men,  afraid  of  our  finding 
them  out.  They're  all  Orientals  at  heart,  you  know. 
They  adore  to  think  of  themselves  as  superior 
beings — masters  of  creation — a  kind  of  combination 
of  God  and  feudal  lord.  They've  given  up  the  ex 
terior  of  the  feudal  lord,  but  in  their  souls  they're 
still  strutting,  and  dispensing  the  Higher  and  the 
Lower  Justice,  and  thinking  of  women  as  pretty 
things  to  have  about. 

"And  that  we  would  actually  presume  to  want 
equal  privileges  with  them !  Heavens ! .  .  .  And  that 
we  should  actually  get  the  privileges  and  exercise 
them,  here  and  there  about  the  world!  That's 
why  the  poor  things  are  frightened.  So  long  as  we 
only  tried  they  could  snort  and  look  superior  and 

14  [203] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

tell  us  to  go  take  care  of  our  nurseries.  But  we've 
won  in  heaps  of  places.  We've  succeeded,  and  now 
they're  quaking  in  their  boots.  What  if  we  should 
find  out  that  they're  not  a  higher  order  of  beings  at 
all,  but  just  plain  humans,  pretending  to  be  wise  and 
grand?  It's  an  awful  thing  to  have  your  pretty  slave 
that  you  thought  looked  up  to  you  so  find  out  what 
a  sham  you  really  are.  She  might  laugh!"  j 

"She  wouldn't  laugh  if  she  was  wise,"  Hope  said. 
She  was  a  little  puzzled  by  this  odd  adherent  to  her 
cause,  and  not  at  all  attracted  to  her.  Mrs.  Pierson 
seemed  to  feel  that  the  chief  purpose  of  the  Woman 
Suffrage  movement  was  to  prove  the  fallibility  of  man. 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,"  Mrs.  Pierson  said,  still 
paying  no  heed  at  all  to  her  companion's  words, 
"  we  slaves  and  domestic  animals  are,  in  this  country 
at  least,  far  the  superior  sex.  There's  no  doubt  of 
that.  We  have  most  of  the  education  and  culture  and 
civilization  of  the  race.  Our  brothers  and  husbands 
play  football  in  then*  universities  instead  of  reading 
books,  and  afterward  they  go  to  Wall  Street  in  the 
morning,  and  sit  in  their  clubs  afterward  talking 
about  stocks  or  horses.  They  never  look  at  a  picture 
if  they  can  help  it,  and  they  get  angry  if  we  drag 
them  to  the  opera  or  to  a  serious  play.  In  the  other 
social  classes  they  work  all  day  long  and  read  a  cheap 
newspaper  through  the  evening.  It's  we  women 
who  keep  civilization  alive.  And  if  you  don't 
believe  it  ask  any  intelligent  foreigner  who  has  ever 
visited  the  country." 

[204] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

This  might  be  in  a  measure  true,  Hope  thought; 
but  it  still  seemed  to  her  hardly  to  contain  the 
essence  of  the  Woman  Suffrage  argument.  She 
wondered  how  much  of  it  young  Mr.  Pierson  had  to 
listen  to  every  day,  and  she  suddenly  felt  very  sorry 
for  him. 

She  asked  a  question  or  two  in  an  endeavor  to 
find  out  just  what  form  her  companion's  activities 
in  the  movement  took;  but  Mrs.  Pierson  was  both 
vague  and  a  little  impatient.  The  idea  was,  Hope 
gathered,  the  thing.  What  mattered  was  the  Point 
of  View. 

And  just  here  it  may  as  well  be  set  down  that 
she  later  made  inquiries  of  Aunt  Alice  King,  who 
was  somewhat  hard  on  Dolly  Pierson,  describing  her 
as  a  shallow  little  pretender,  whose  only  use  for 
Woman  Suffrage  was  as  a  shield  to  cover  her  neu 
rotic  vanity. 

Luckily,  the  men  soon  came  into  the  drawing-room, 
and  not  long  afterward  a  number  of  other  people 
arrived,  for  there  was  to  be  music.  Hope  talked  to 
a  merry  old  gentleman  who  paid  her  the  most  de 
lightful  compliments  in  the  nicest  way,  and,  after 
him,  to  a  rather  tongue-tied  man  with  a  heavy 
mustache  and  an  eyeglass,  whose  face  was  vaguely 
familiar.  She  tortured  herself  for  quite  ten  minutes 
in  an  endeavor  to  fix  it  in  the  proper  association, 
then  quite  suddenly  remembered  that  he  was  the 
man  who  had  been  walking  with  Roger  Bacon's 
sister  in  the  Park  that  day  last  spring.  She  won- 

[205] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

dered  if  by  any  chance  he  remembered  ever  having 
seen  her  before,  and  decided  that  he  didn't.  But 
once  he  said  that  a  friend  of  his,  Mrs.  Cartwright, 
had  spoken  of  her. 

"And  old  Henry,  too,  now  that  I  think  of  it.  He 
said  you  were  a  good  sort.  And  it  must  be  true, 
because  old  Henry's  not  often  wrong." 

The  Cartwrights  were  still  in  the  country,  she 
gathered — Long  Island — but  expected  to  move  into 
town  before  the  end  of  the  month. 

Roger  Bacon  came  up  just  before  the  music  be 
gan,  and  dispossessed  the  man  with  the  big  mus 
tache,  who  affected  to  be  enraged,  and  said: 

"Yes,  that's  the  way  we  elderly  Johnnies  get 
pushed  and  prodded  about.  Sit  down  beside  a 
pretty  gell  and  up  bounds  a  young  dancin'  man  and 
out  you  go!  How're  you,  Roger?  Lunch  with  you 
to-morrow,  if  you  like." 

Hope  asked  who  the  man  was,  saying  that  she 
liked  him,  and  Bacon  explained: 

"That's  Major  Harding,  and  one  of  the  best  old 
chaps  in  the  world — Englishman,  of  course.  He 
chucked  the  army  after  the  South  African  war — 
invalided  home  with  a  bad  wound  and  a  D.  S.  O. — 
and  he  spends  a  part  of  his  time  in  America.  I 
suppose  that's  no  reason  I  shouldn't  tell  you  that 
he  wanted  rather  badly  to  marry  my  sister,  some 
years  back.  But  she  preferred  Henry,  and  now 
Harding  is  the  best  pal  they've  got,  and  just  as  fond 
of  Henry  as  he  is  of  Nora." 

[206] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

Hope  thought  that  very  touching,  and  wanted  to 
say  so;  but  she  couldn't,  for  a  famous  operatic 
gentleman  began  just  then  to  sing  Spirto  Gentil 
from  the  Favorita. 

Much  later,  as  they  were  going  upstairs,  Mrs. 
Darnley  asked  Hope  if  she  had  had  a  good  evening, 
and  was  told  with  great  feeling,  ."Heavenly!'* 

"Oh!  Well,  I'm  glad.  I  was  afraid  it  was  a 
little  dull.  Later  on  there'll  be  more  amusing  peo 
ple  in  town.  Did  you  and  Roger  Bacon  get  on  as 
well  as  at  Deauville?" 

Hope,  with  the  air  of  remembering  that  young 
man  only  by  an  effort,  said  that  he  seemed  very 
nice — and  so  were  all  the  others.  But  when  she  was 
alone  and  making  her  preparations  for  the  night, 
she  remembered  him  better — in  fact,  with  no  effort 
at  all,  and  could  have  repeated  every  word  he  had 
said  from  first  to  last.  She  said  to  herself  that  one 
of  the  nicest  things  about  him  was  that  he  was 
so  "comfortable."  He  wasn't  forever  eying  you 
or  saying  things  that  might  mean  a  great  deal 
more  than  they  seemed  to,  or  telling  you  how 
well  you  understood  him,  or  anything  silly  like 
that. 

Perhaps,  on  the  whole,  he  needn't  have  been  quite 
so  comfortable.  He  might,  for  example,  have  gone 
on  a  wee  bit  further  in  that  nice  mediaeval  vein  of 
his  about  how  little  the  welfare  of  womankind  mat 
tered  in  comparison  to  her  individual  welfare.  That 

[207] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

was  capable  of  a  good  deal  of  development.  But  he 
had  dropped  the  subject  rather  abruptly. 

She  would  rather  have  died  than  confess  it;  but 
she  was  the  least  bit  piqued  over  his  matter-of- 
factness. 

And  so,  it  may  be  assumed,  Mr.  Roger  Bacon  had 
done  a  very  good  evening's  work  indeed. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  next  day  at  lunch  Miss  King  suddenly 
interrupted  herself  in  the  middle  of  an  animated 
harangue,  and,  with  the  appearance  of  just  having 
thought  of  something,  fastened  her  eyes  a  little 
anxiously  upon  her  goddaughter. 

"Have  I  got  soot  on  my  nose,  or  don't  you  like 
my  hat?"  Hope  inquired;  but  the  elder  lady  sighed 
and  said: 

"I  had  a  great  rowing  over  the  telephone,  an  hour 
ago,  from  Caroline  Darnley,  who  says  I'm  working 
you  like  a  slave,  that  you're  getting  thin  and  pale, 
and  I  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  myself.  There  was  a 
good  deal  more  of  it,  but  that's  the  main  thing.  .  .  . 
I'm  afraid  you  have  lost  a  little  color.  Oh,  dear! 
We  absent-minded  fanatics  oughtn't  to  have  charge 
of  girls.  There's  no  doubt  of  that.  We're  not  fit 
for  the  job.  My  child,  you  mustn't  try  to  do  too 
much.  Zeal  is  all  very  well,  but  one  has  to  use  it 
with  some  care.  You've  been  overworking  or  over- 
worrying,  or  something.  I  can  see  that,  now  I've 
been  taken  by  the  throat  and  compelled  to.  I've 
always  been  such  a  tough-skinned  old  party  that  I 
dare  say  I  don't  make  allowance  for  other  people's 

[209] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

nerves.  I  remember  a  girl  going  to  pieces,  a  year 
or  two  ago,  and  having  hysterics  in  the  office  up 
stairs,  and  telling  me  I  was  a  slave-driver.  Perhaps 
it  was  true,  too.  I've  never  known.  .  .  .  What's 
the  matter?  Don't  you  and  Miss  Scholl  get  on? 
And  if  not,  why  haven't  you  told  me?" 

Hope  said  nothing  at  all  was  the  matter,  that 
perhaps  she  got  a  little  tired  now  and  then,  that 
Caroline  Darnley  ought  to  be  slapped,  and  that 
she  was  sure  Miss  Scholl  was  a  perfectly  splendid 
worker. 

"If  I  could  only  hope  to  do  it  as  well  as  that — 
ever!  I  wish  I  were  more  like  her,  but  it's  no  good 
wishing.  I  couldn't  be." 

"No,"  said  Miss  l£ing,  slowly.  "No,  you 
couldn't."  She  was  a  shrewd  lady  when  she  fas 
tened  her  attention  upon  a  subject.  She  saw  a  good 
deal.  "I  think  I'll  turn  you  over  to  some  one  else 
for  a  bit.  There's  that  Emily  Brooks.  She's  more 
your  sort.  Miss  Scholl  is  a  bit  hard  and — efficient, 
isn't  she?  Though  for  all  that  she's  the  best  dis 
trict-worker  we  have.  I  expect  you'll  learn  more 
from  Emily  Brooks.  And  perhaps  you'd  better 
have  a  rest.  Don't  do  anything  for  a  while.  Let  it 
sink  in." 

Hope  scoffed  at  the  idea  of  stopping  her  work 
altogether,  even  for  the  briefest  time,  but  she  was 
secretly  delighted  over  exchanging  Miss  Scholl  for 
little  Mrs.  Brooks,  whom  she  had  met  (at  luncheon 
in  Fortieth  Street)  and  immediately  liked.  She 

[210] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

thought  her  rather   like  Mrs.   Cartwright,   Roger 
Bacon's  sister. 

So  after  this  things  went  better.  Mrs.  Brooks 
was  very  kind  and  sympathetic;  she  even  had  a 
sense  of  humor,  so  that  the  two  often  laughed  over 
the  comic  incidents  that  arose  in  their  house-to- 
house  canvassing,  or  over  their  failures.  Her  style 
of  attack,  to  put  it  briefly,  was  much  gentler  and 
more  persuasive,  and  it  seemed  to  Hope  quite  as 
successful  as  the  businesslike  method  of  her  former 
companion. 

But  even  under  these  favorable  conditions  it  was 
no  good  trying  to  hide  from  herself  the  fact  that  the 
thing  was  hateful  to  her.  She  still  shrank  and  trem 
bled  before  strange  doors.  She  was  still  miserable 
and  tongue-tied  within  them.  She  still  reached 
home,  after  the  daily  round,  with  disordered  and 
exhausted  nerves.  It  was  very  discouraging. 

Little  Mrs.  Brooks  reported  to  Miss  King,  and 
depressed  that  good  lady  mightily. 

"It's  wicked  to  let  the  poor  child  go  about  day 
after  day  in  this  agony.  She  hates  it  so!  She's 
all  in  a  tremble  before  we're  half  done,  and  I  don't 
think  it  grows  any  easier  for  her.  She's  not  fitted 
for  the  work,  Miss  King.  She's  too  sensitive.  She 
suffers  too  much." 

"And  how  about  you?"  demanded  her  chief. 
"You  don't  go  district-canvassing  for  sport.  It's 
not  your  idea  of  a  jolly  day.  You  suffer  like  any 
thing.  But  you  go  on  with  it,  and  you  keep  your 

[211] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

health,  and  you're  one  of  the  best  workers  we  have. 
If  all  the  soldiers  who  hated  to  fight  had  gone  on  a 
strike  some  centuries  ago,  the  world  would  never  have 
had  any  wars  and  we  should  have  no  civilization 
to-day.  Of  course*  the  child  hates  some  of  the  things 
she  has  to  do — so  do  you — so  do  I.  But  The  Cause 
has  got  to  go  on." 

Mrs.  Brooks  had  flushed  with  pleasure  over  that 
brief  tribute,  but  she  stuck  to  her  point. 

"You  can't  judge  Miss  Standish  by  me.  Yes, 
I  had  a  bad  time  at  first,  and  I  still  have  it  at  in 
tervals,  but  I  can  do  the  work.  There  are  some 
people  hard  enough  or  tough  enough  to  go  on  with 
things  that  in  a  way  they're  unsuited  to.  I'm 
quite  sure  that  Miss  Standish  isn't.  Mind  you, 
I  don't  mean  that  she  hasn't  courage  and  grit;  she 
has — heaps.  You'd  know  that  if  you  could  have 
been  with  her  as  I  have.  She's  no  weakling.  But 
this  particular  kind  of  unpleasantness  is — I  hardly 
know  how  to  put  it — paralyzing  to  her.  There  are 
certain  things  that  none  of  us  can  do,  however 
brave  we  may  be.  I  dare  say  Miss  Standish  could 
face  an  angry  dog  or  go  into  a  burning  house,  but 
force  her  way  into  strangers'  houses  who  don't 
want  her  there  she  can't — that  is,  she's  no  good 
when  she  gets  in." 

Miss  King  betrayed  a  sudden  and  astonishing 
emotion. 

"I've  set  my  heart  on  it!"  she  said,  in  a  shaking 
voice.  And  the  younger  woman  thought  there  were 

[212] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

tears  behind  the  big,  round  spectacles,  and  was 
frightened. 

"She's  all  I  have.  I've  neither  chick  nor  child 
of  my  own.  She's  very  dear  to  me.  And  when  she 
came  of  her  own  will  and  asked  to  be  put  to  work — 
I  just  can't  believe  it  won't  come  right  in  time. 
She  is  sensitive,  I  know.  She  was  brought  up  in  an 
absurd,  over-sheltered  fashion,  and  things  hurt  her 
easily.  But  she's  sound  and  strong  at  bottom. 
She'll  harden.  I'm  sure  of  it.  Give  her  time! 
We  all  need  time  to  adapt  ourselves  to  new,  strange 
conditions.  Just  at  first  such  conditions  always  look 
too  terrible  to  be  borne.  Perhaps  Hope  will  need 
more  time  than  you  or  I  should  need.  Well,  give  it 
to  her!  She'll  be  all  right  presently.  I'm  sure  she 
will.  She  must!" 

Little  Mrs.  Brooks  was  rather  overcome  by  this 
unprecedented  show  of  feeling  on  the  part  of  her 
chief,  and  said  no  more  just  then.  But  she  went 
away  shaking  her  head,  and  Miss  King  sat  a  long 
time  alone  and  idle,  staring  out  of  her  window  into 
the  street  that  was  wet  with  November  rain. 

Luckily,  life  wasn't  all  district-canvassing.  Hope, 
prodded  on  very  earnestly  by  Caroline  Darnley,  and 
even  by  Miss  King  (who  seemed  to  have  engaged  in 
a  little  wise  reflection),  dined  out  rather  a  good  deal 
in  a  quiet  way,  and  went  to  the  theater,  and  even 
to  the  opera,  where  Mrs.  Darnley  had  a  box  on  alter 
nate  Mondays  and  Fridays.  This  last  form  of  dis- 

[213] 


sipation  had  to  be  discussed  at  some  length,  for 
ladies  in  mourning  do  not  as  a  rule  show  themselves 
at  the  opera  in  the  boxes;  but  Hope,  quite  apart  from 
her  real  passion  for  operatic  music,  had  very  little 
regard  for  the  old-fashioned  conventionalities  in  the 
observance  of  mourning.  As  she  put  it,  she  pre 
ferred  to  do  her  mourning  inside — a  theory  the 
Darnleys  were  heartily  in  sympathy  with. 

"It  isn't,"  Caroline  said,  "as  if  your  poor,  dear 
mother  had  lived  here  in  New  York.  If  she  had, 
you  would  be  more  or  less  compelled  to  submit 
yourself  to  the  usual  rules,  or  else  people  would 
think  you  heartless.  But  very  few  will  know  who 
you  are,  anyhow,  and  fewer  still  will  know  why 
you're  in  black.  So  if  I  were  you  I  -should  do  just 
as  I  chose." 

"So  should  I!  Hang  me  if  I  shouldn't!"  said 
George  D. 

And  the  result  was  that  Hope  sat  in  what  has 
been  called  (in  certain  of  the  public  prints)  the 
"gilded  horseshoe,"  on  alternate  Mondays  and 
Fridays,  in  a  kind  of  trance  of  delight,  and  forgot 
from  nine  until  eleven  o'clock  that  there  were  any 
troubles  in  all  the  world. 

George  Darnley  allowed  himself  to  be  drawn  into 
the  temple  of  song  with  an  unwonted  docility  that 
puzzled  her  a  good  deal.  And  she  was  further  in 
trigued  by  discovering  that  he  went  the  more  gladly 
on  German  nights.  She  asked  him  why  this  was, 
and  he  told  her  in  confidence  that  he  liked  the 

[214] 


THE    OPENING   DOOR 

"dark  operas  best,  because  his  sleep  was  undis 
turbed." 

She  went  down  to  the  Cart wrights*  in  Long  Island 
for  their  last  week  before  moving  into  town,  and 
had  a  very  restful,  happy  time.  There  were  only 
three  or  four  other  people.  Nora  Cartwright  asked 
her  beforehand  if  she  would  mind  Roger  Bacon's 
coming. 

"If  you  think  he'd  be  a  nuisance,  just  say  so  frank 
ly  and  we  won't  have  him.  It's  quite  possible  that 
you  don't  want  to  be  bothered  with  young  men." 

Hope  said  she  liked  him  very  much,  and  hoped 
he'd  be  present.  So  he  was,  and  they  had  a  long 
ride  together  across  country  on  a  couple  of  Henry 
C.'s  hunters,  larking  over  stone  and  wire  like  maniacs, 
and  coming  home  well  blown  in  the  rain. 

At  Christmas-time  she  went  for  a  week  to  a  place 
the  Darnleys  owned  in  the  Berkshires.  There  was 
a  party  of  a  dozen  or  so,  and  we  need  feel  no  aston 
ishment  to  learn  that  it  included  Mr.  Roger  Bacon. 
Miss  King  was  asked,  too,  at  Hope's  request;  but 
that  busy  lady  made  a  sound  like  a  war  horse  snort 
ing,  and  said: 

"Good  gracious  me!     I  should  think  not." 

So,  as  has  already  been  stated,  the  winter  wasn't 
by  any  means  all  district  -  canvassing  for  Miss 
Standish.  Still,  there  was  a  good  deal  of  that  hated 
activity  and  much  work  of  other  kinds — reading  and 
investigation,  and  keeping  up  with  the  progress  of 

[215] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

the  movement  the  world  over,  and  attending  the 
frequent  district  meetings,  where  the  more  serious 
of  the  questions  and  objections  put  to  the  canvassers 
were  answered  publicly  by  well-known  speakers. 

She  made  herself  almost  as  familiar  as  Miss  King 
with  the  work  being  done  in  New  York,  not  only  by 
her  own  organization,  but  by  the  others,  and  met, 
first  and  last,  all  the  prominent  workers  in  the  cause, 
as  well  as  many  who  were  not  prominent  at  all,  but 
would  have  liked  to  be.  Like  all  big  movements,  she 
found  this  one  made  up  of  many  kinds  of  people, 
not  all  of  whom  agreed  perfectly  among  themselves. 
But,  unlike  most  other  movements,  it  contained  no 
dregs  of  dishonesty.  There  were  women  who  were 
in  a  small  way  seekers  after  gain — gain  of  notoriety, 
gain  of  social  recognition  (this  especially  since  the 
adoption  of  the  cause  by  two  very  grand  ladies  who 
had  begun  to  make  it  fashionable).  But  this  small 
leaven  of  private  enterprise  seemed  to  do  no  partic 
ular  harm,  and  the  ambitious  little  women  from  the 
West  Side  apartments  who  hoped  to  bridge  the 
hitherto  impassable  Park  by  getting  on  governing 

boards  with  Mrs.  -  —  or  Mrs. were  often  the 

hardest  and  best  workers  in  the  whole  lot. 

Also  it  seemed  to  her  that  there  was,  throughout 
this  large  band,  an  intelligence,  a  quiet  devotion, 
and  an  efficiency  which  she  thought  must  be  very 
remarkable,  if  not  unprecedented,  among  the  world's 
causes.  It  was  that  oft  dreamed  of  but  never  before 
realized  thing — an  army  practically  without  camp 

[216] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

followers.  One  saw,  to  be  sure,  a  Dolly  Pierson  here 
and  there;  but,  all  told,  there  was  no  more  than  a 
handful  of  her  kind,  and  they  did  no  appreciable 
harm.  Indeed,  after  a  preliminary  selfish  and  silly 
phrase,  they  frequently  turned  to  and  worked  like 
beavers. 

To  cheer  her  personal  discouragement,  Hope  often 
called  before  her  mind's  eye  a  kind  of  picture  of 
this  busy,  dauntless  army  toiling  endlessly  against 
tradition  and  prejudice  and  ridicule.  Its  splendid 
courage  she  thought  should  hearten  the  faintest 
spirit,  and  she  was  heartened  many  times  over. 
The  bravery  of  them  made  her  brave.  But  no 
amount  of  fine  example  could  lessen  that  instinc 
tive  and,  it  seemed,  incurable  shrinking  with  which 
she  set  out  day  after  day  upon  those  nightmarish 
canvassing  tours  or  put  her  at  her  ease  before  hostile 
strangers. 

For  weeks  that  stretched  themselves  into  months 
she  hoped  against  hope,  blindly  trusting  in  Aunt 
Alice  King's  repeated  assurance  that  she  was  passing 
through  a  quite  commonplace  phase  and  would 
presently  come  out  at  the  other  side. 

Long  afterward,  when  she  looked  back  upon  this 
period  of  her  life  from  a  great  distance,  she  saw  her 
self  less  as  a  human  being  with  the  will  to  do  than 
as  an  object,  a  thing  without  cognition,  buffeted  in 
the  pull  of  two  opposing  forces.  There  was  The 
Cause  (she  always  thought  of  it  in  capitals,  as  Miss 
Alice  King  spoke  it),  a  woman's  duty  and  privilege; 

[217] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

there  was  love  (in  the  person  of  Roger  Bacon),  a 
woman's  birthright,  and  between  them  that  will- 
less,  helpless,  buffeted  object — herself. 

The  man  grew  upon  her  insidiously,  unawares,  he 
and  what  he  stood  for — love,  a  home,  shelter  from 
the  boisterous  winds,  tenderness,  and  understanding, 
a  child  to  hold  close  in  one's  arms — all  the  sweet, 
natural  things  that  women's  souls  must  long  for 
forever,  if  the  world  is  to  go  on.  He  began — he 
may  or  may  not  have  realized  it — as  a  kind  of  half- 
impersonal  refuge  from  toil  and  stress;  the  nicest 
part  of  the  pleasant  evening  world  that  soothed  her 
after  a  discouraging  day;  the  face  she  was  most 
glad  to  see  of  all  faces;  the  best  of  all  her  friends, 
the  kindest  of  the  most  tactful,  the  most  comfort 
able.  And  always  there  was  that  not  too  distant 
background  of  emotion — something  strange  and 
exciting  and  rather  blissful  that  waited  but  didn't 
obtrude  itself. 

Furthermore,  she  admired  him  very  much.  And 
she  had  some  reason  to,  though  that  is  not  to  say 
he  was  in  any  sense  an  extraordinary  young  man. 
The  good  clubs  of  the  two  Anglo-Saxon  countries 
are,  if  not  full  of  his  like,  certainly  well  leavened  by 
it.  He  was  extremely  pleasant  to  look  upon;  he 
had  healthy  out-of-door  habits;  he  had  manners 
good  in  the  true  sense,  in  that  they  were  considerate 
of  other  people.  His  ideas  were  the  ideas  of  his 
class,  but  also  of  the  present  generation  of  his  class, 
which  is  to  make  an  important  distinction.  For 

[218] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

there  is  just  now  abroad  in  the  land  an  epidemic 
of  conscience,  and  even  the  sons  of  wealth  and  con 
servatism  are  feeling  pulled  down  by  it.  Progress 
has,  for  a  variety  of  reasons,  hurried  its  pace;  and 
ideals  of  public  rectitude,  of  the  responsibility  of 
man  to  man,  of  a  democracy  very  much  akin  to 
brotherly  love  have  got  out  of  the  hands  of  reformers 
with  eccentric  hair,  and  into  very  good  company 
indeed — company  that  dines  out  at  the  best  houses, 
and  even  goes  to  the  opera  (when  it  is  dragged 
there). 

Bacon's  father  had  been  pretty  well  satisfied  with 
the  world  as  he  found  it;  Bacon's  elder  brother,  if 
he  had  possessed  one,  would  have  been  exceedingly 
satisfied  with  it;  Bacon  himself  wasn't.  He  had 
taken  no  violent  steps  to  show  his  disapproval,  and 
it  seemed  unlikely  that  he  ever  would,  for  he  had 
neither  ambition  nor,  he  considered,  qualifications 
for  public  life.  But  a  few  people  knew  that  his  en 
couragement,  counsel,  and  bank  account  had  stood 
behind  more  than  one  young  political  aspirant  of 
proved  honesty  and  progressive  ideals;  and  they 
knew,  too,  that  he  had  lunches  and  dinners  in  a 
private  room  at  one  of  his  clubs,  where  he  and  other 
young  gentlemen  sat  and  talked  of  local  or  national 
conditions  and  planned  the  good  fight. 

Hope  more  than  once  asked  him  about  these 
activities,  for  George  Darnley  had  hinted  at  some 
thing  of  the  kind  in  Deauville.  And  after  a  rather 
evasive  beginning — f  or  he  was  a  little  shy — he  talked 

15  [219] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

to  her  openly.  He  said  it  wasn't  much — the  small 
est  drop  in  a  large  bucket.  He  couldn't  do  any 
thing  in  a  public  way  himself,  didn't  even  want  to. 
But  it  was  rather  fun  talking  to  the  chaps  who  did. 
Especially  when  they  were  out  against  privilege  and 
corruption.  And  now  and  then  one  could  help  in 
some  small,  obscure  way.  He  was  uncomfortable 
talking  about  himself,  and  had  to  be  drawn  out  with 
some  skill.  Then*  he  talked  very  well  indeed,  and 
Hope  was  able  to  follow  him  through  having  studied 
just  these  matters  of  political  reform  from  the 
woman-suffrage  point  of  view. 

But  that  subject,  The  Cause,  was  never  spoken 
of  between  them.  Early  in  the  winter  she  had 
wanted  to  bring  it  up.  It  seemed  to  her  incredible 
that  any  one  so  alert  in  mind,  so  active  to  the  com 
mon  good,  could  maintain  a  blind  prejudice  against 
this  great  complement  of  democracy,  if  once  the 
case  was  fairly  presented  to  him.  She  even  held 
herself,  for  a  time,  on  watch  awaiting  an  opportunity. 
But  the  opportunity  never  came,  and  her  desire  to 
force  it  grew  fainter  with  the  weeks  that  passed. 
She  came  more  and  more  to  feel  that  Roger  Bacon 
and  The  Cause  were  remote  from  each  other,  irrec 
oncilable  opposing  forces  in  her  life. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  know  just  how  strong 
his  hold  upon  her  was  during  this  epoch — just  what 
would  have  happened  if  the  man's  patience  and  self- 
control  had  given  way.  Nobody  knows,  and  it  is 
unlikely  Hope  knew.  She  had  a  feminine  and  vir- 

[220] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

ginal  skill  in  dodging  issues  that  she  was  afraid  of; 
and,  besides,  her  mind  was  occupied.  Girls,  even 
impulsive  and  potentially  ardent  girls,  granted  a 
regular  occupation,  are  more  passive  in  love  matters 
than  many  people  realize. 

Still,  it  was  a  state  of  affairs  that  obviously  couldn't 
go  on  forever — this  hanging  inactive  in  the  pull  of 
two  equal  forces.  Planets  and  moons  and  the  like 
can  do  it,  and,  so  far  as  we  may  judge,  feel  none  the 
worse;  but  planets  are  made  of  harder  stuff,  and, 
besides,  they  measure  time  by  a  longer  rule.  It  may 
be  that  even  they,  after  being  pretty  well  tired  out 
with  a  million  years  or  so  of  indecision,  crumple  up 
quite  suddenly,  just  like  Hope  Standish,  and  give 
way,  and  rush  with  great  violence  in  the  direction 
of  one  of  the  forces,  and  are  glad  to  do  it. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

WHAT  finally  happened  to  put  an  end  to  this 
period  of  indecision  came  about  through  a 
combination  of  accident  and  bad  judgment.  Per 
haps  it  would  have  happened  anyhow,  sooner  or 
later.  Nobody  knows. 

The  bad  judgment  was  on  the  part  of  Miss  Alice 
King,  who,  after  having  for  some  time  "viewed 
with  alarm" — as  the  newspapers  say — a  state  of 
affairs  that  seemed  to  grow  no  better,  decided  that 
heroic  treatment  was  indicated.  On  the  principle 
of  throwing  a  child  into  the  water  to  make  it  swim, 
she  arranged  that  her  goddaughter  should  be  one 
of  the  speakers  at  the  next  monthly  mass  meeting 
of  the  district  in  which  she  had  been  at  work.  She 
gave  her  an  easy  subject — the  answer  to  the  foolish 
"Ballots  and  Bullets"  objection — Women  oughtn't 
to  have  the  vote  because  they  can't  fight. 

After  a  preliminary  stage  of  sheer  panic  Hope 
was  rather  glad.  She  had  never  spoken  in  public — 
not  even  to  recite  a  "piece"  in  school — but  she  had 
often  listened  to  her  fellow-workers  at  these  monthly 
mass  meetings,  and  it  didn't  seem  such  a  very  diffi 
cult  thing  to  do.  It  wasn't  at  all  like  the  open-air 

[222] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

meetings  in  London,  where  you  had  to  face  a  hostile 
mob  of  savages  who  booed  and  jeered  at  you,  and 
threw  things  and  shouted  out  insults,  and  even  tried 
to  rush  you  off  your  feet.  Here  you  just  stood  upon 
a  platform  before  a  lot  of  people  indifferently  curi 
ous  or  downright  friendly,  and  smiled  at  them  and 
demolished  the  argument  allotted  to  you  with  the 
greatest  ease.  And  if  you  were  clever  or  witty,  they 
laughed  and  clapped  their  hands  at  every  good  thing 
you  said.  They  did  that  whenever  little  Mrs.  Brooks 
spoke,  and  Mrs.  Brooks  wasn't  so  very  clever,  either. 
She  was  just  nice,  and,  of  course,  up  on  her  subject. 
Hope  imagined  herself  standing  before  one  of  those 
good-natured  audiences.  She  was  well  prepared 
in  her  speech  and  perfectly  at  her  ease.  It  was  just 
like  talking  to  half  a  dozen  friends.  They  were  such 
nice  people!  They  laughed  when  she  made  a  little 
joke;  and  when  she  brought  out  a  decisive  point 
they  nodded  their  heads,  and  she  could  hear  them 
say:  "That's  right!  That's  true!  Good  for  you, 
Miss!  Hit  'em  again!"  the  way  they  did  when  they 
had  Emily  Brooks  before  them. 

She  felt  so  at  one  with  them.  A  little  all -over 
thrill  of  sympathy  and  pleasure.  This  was  real 
power.  She  was  actually  swaying  a  lot  of  New 
York's  citizens — making  up  their  minds  for  them. 
She  was  helping  to  create  history. 

It  seems  rather  odd,  this  confidence  of  hers.  One 
would  have  expected  her  to  be  self  -  distrustful, 
nervously  expectant  of  failure.  Perhaps  it  was  in 

[223] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

part  a  kind  of  desperate  last  hope,  since  everything 
else  had  gone  so  badly.  And  then,  public  speaking 
looks  easy  to  the  inexperienced. 

For  everything  else  had  gone  very  badly  indeed 
— the  district  -  can vassing,  that  is  to  say.  Little 
Mrs.  Brooks  was  ill  for  a  week  with  influenza,  so 
that  Hope  had  to  make  a  temporary  alliance  with 
another  worker,  a  total  stranger  whom  she  disliked. 
And  once,  in  the  course  of  her  afternoon  rounds,  she 
encountered  Archie  Traill.  He  was  coming  out  of  a 
tenement  house  that  she  was  just  about  to  enter, 
and  they  met  face  to  face.  Traill,  very  red  and 
stiff,  passed  on  with  no  sign  of  recognition;  but 
Hope  was  done  for  the  rest  of  that  day,  and  had 
to  go  home.  She  was  amazed  and  terrified  at  the 
shock  the  sight  of  him  gave  her. 

On  the  afternoon  of  the  day  on  which  Hope  was  to 
make  her  speech  Mrs.  Brooks,  who  had  by  now  re 
covered,  failed  to  meet  her  at  their  usual  rendezvous. 
She  waited  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  started  to  return 
home,  and  then,  buoyed  up  by  that  odd  new  con 
fidence,  determined  to  make  at  least  a  call  or  two 
alone.  It  was  the  first  time. 

She  went  to  the  house  that  stood  at  the  top  of 
her  list — it  was  in  the  middle  forties  east  of  Third 
Avenue — and  was  met  by  a  little  yellow-haired  Ger 
man  girl  and  a  tiny  dog  of  unknown  breed,  that 
jumped  up  at  her  knees,  barking  incessantly  in  a  fury 
of  excitement.  Hope  asked  if  the  little  girl's  mother 
was  at  home,  and  the  little  girl,  who  seemed  too  shy 

[224] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

to  talk,  led  her  to  a  door  at  one  side  of  the  narrow, 
tile-paved  hall  and  showed  her  into  a  dim,  untidy 
room  that  smelt  of  cooking.  An  enormously  stout 
woman  in  spectacles  sat  near  one  of  the  two  front 
windows  cutting  up  vegetables  in  a  bowl,  and  she 
had  asthma,  and  breathed  with  a  sound  like  snoring. 

Hope  said:  "You  won't  mind  if  I  come  in  for 
a  few  moments,  will  you?  I  want  to  talk  to  you 
about  something." 

But  the  very  stout  woman,  without  the  slightest 
change  of  expression,  suddenly  pointed  the  vege 
table  knife  at  her  in  a  most  intimidating  manner, 
and  said: 

"Ja,  I  know!  You  iss  one  of  der  Suffrage  yong 
ladees.  Alretty  ve  haf  two.  Veil — say  ut!" 

Hope  said  she  was  sorry,  that  some  mistake  must 
have  been  made,  that,  according  to  her  list,  this  flat 
had  not  yet  been  visited. 

"Perhaps  you've  thought  about  it  a  little — about 
Suffrage,  I  mean.  Is  there  any  question  you'd  like 
to  ask?  Do  you  think  I  could  make  anything 
clearer?" 

"It  iss  nodding  to  me,"  said  the  very  stout  woman, 
dully.  "If  you  vant  to  say  ut,  say  ut!" 

So  Hope  "said  it"  as  well  as  she  could,  trying  to 
compress  a  good  many  of  the  primary  arguments 
into  five  minutes  or  less.  It  was  a  little  like  talking 
to  a  wall,  for  her  hostess  gave  no  sign  whatever  of 
listening.  But  she  had  listened,  it  would  seem,  for 
at  the  end  she  laid  the  big  earthen  bowl  on  a  table 

[225] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

and  turned  about  in  a  strange,  still  fury.  She  shook 
a  fat  forefinger  in  the  air,  and  her  eyes  gleamed  and 
glinted  behind  her  spectacles  rather  like  Miss  Alice 
King's  eyes. 

"Vot  you  know  aboudt  ut?"  she  cried,  wheezing 
terribly.  "Vot  you  know,  you  und  de  odder  ladees 
mit  your  feaders  unt  your  fine  cloes,  unt  your 
gloafs  on?  Vot  you  know  aboudt  vachus  und 
vork,  und  people  as  vork  ?  You  come  here  und 
talk,  und  ven  you  go  avay  ve  laff — if  ve  can.  You 
say  de  vomen  must  vote  und  den  eferyting  is  right 
— nobody  vorks  too  long  hours,  nobody  vorks  vere 
danger  iss,  nobody  vorks  for  less  pay  as  ve  can 
lif  py.  .  .  .  Subbose  you  dell  me  somedings  more! 
How  aboudt  ut  ven  dere  iss  no  vork?  Wie?  Ja! 
How  aboudt  dat?  .  .  .  Loog  pehindt!" 

Hope  looked  where  she  pointed,  and  suddenly 
became  aware  of  a  gray,  bald  little  man,  who  sat  in 
the  shadows  at  the  back  of  the  room,  bent  over  in  a 
chair  with  his  hands  hanging  between  his  knees,  so 
still  that  he  might  have  been  dead.  She  almost 
cried  out. 

"He  iss  my  man,"  the  very  stout  woman  said, 
wheezing.  "He  votes,  ja!  He  votes  two,  three 
times.  Bot  does  he  vote  himself  a  chob?  Nein. 
Nichts.  Five  veeks  he  does  not  vork,  und  soon  ve 
do  not  eat." 

The  little  gray  man  looked  up,  and  Hope  saw 
that  his  face  was  gray,  too,  with  hollow,  hopeless, 
dreadful  eyes. 

[£26] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"Five  veeks,  gnadige  Fraulein,"  he  said,  in  a 
whisper.  "Und  soon  ve  starve." 

Hope  covered  her  face  with  her  hands  and  burst 
into  tears. 

She  never  knew  just  how  she  got  out  of  that 
intolerable  room.  She  could  not  remember,  looking 
back  upon  it  afterward,  that  either  husband  or 
wife  had  spoken  to  her  again.  She  could  not  re 
member  whether  she  herself  had  said  anything  more 
or  not.  Somehow,  ignominiously,  she  fled  and  found 
herself  in  the  narrow  hall  outside,  where  the  little 
girl  and  the  little  dog  were  playing  together.  And 
the  little  girl  stared  up  at  her  as  she  leaned  against 
the  wall  wiping  her  eyes,  but  the  little  dog  began 
to  bark  again  with  extraordinary  passion. 

"Five  veeks,  gnadige  Fraulein.  Und  soon  ve 
starve." 

She  had  a  sudden  hideous  vision  of  life  full  of 
horrors  like  that — awful  things  that  she  lacked  the 
hardihood  to  face.  She  fumbled  for  her  purse, 
and  looked  into  it.  There  were  three  ten-dollar 
bills  and  some  silver.  She  saw  herself  a  kind  of 
pygmy,  trying  to  quench  the  flames  of  a  titanic  hell 
with  a  drop  of  water,  but  she  bent  and  put  the 
thirty  dollars  in  the  child's  hand. 

"  Please  give  that  to  your  father !"  she  said.  "  And 
tell  him  I'll  speak  about  him  at  headquarters — do 
you  understand?  I'll  tell  some  people  about  him, 
and  we'll  fix  things  somehow."  The  little  girl 
stared  at  her  with  round,  quite  uncomprehending 

[227] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

eyes;  but  she  held  the  money  tight-clasped  in  one 
small  fist,  and  presently  turned  and  ran  in  with  it  to 
her  parents.  Then  Hope  let  herself  out  of  the  front 
door. 

She  should  have  gone  to  the  upper  stories  of  the 
same  house,  but  she  couldn't  just  then.  She  walked 
a  little  way  down  the  block  toward  Third  Avenue, 
and  chose  a  door  at  random. 

A  tall,  black-haired  woman  in  a  very  dirty  red 
dress,  of  the  kind  sometimes  called  a  "mother 
hubbard,"  answered  her  ring,  and  regarded  her  with 
an  unfriendly  eye  the  while  she  held  the  mother 
hubbard  together  at  the  throat  with  one  hand. 

"I'm  full,"  the  woman  said,  shaking  her  head. 
Hope  didn't  understand,  for  she  had  not  noticed  the 
little  slip  of  paper  stuck  above  the  bell-pull. 

"Full?  I'm  afraid  I  don't — would  you  mind  if  I 
came  in  a  moment?" 

"I  tell  you,"  said  the  woman,  impatiently,  "I'm 
full.  Full  up."  She  looked  the  girl  over  with  a 
cold,  insolent  scrutiny,  from  her  neat  boots  to  her 
pretty  though  unostentatious  hat.  And  she  eyed 
the  black  bag  Hope  was  carrying,  which  contained 
an  assortment  of  "campaign  literature."  "And 
what's  more,  my  girl,  I'd  like  you  to  understand  that 
this  is  a  respectable  house.  We  don't  want  your 
kind  here." 

Still  Hope  didn't  understand.  This  very  odd 
woman  talked  so  strangely!  But  in  company  with 
Miss  Scholl,  or  Emily  Brooks,  she  had  met  with  a 

[228] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

good  many  ungracious  receptions;  and,  though  she 
was  nervous  and  sick  at  heart,  she  tried  once  more. 

"Please,  if  you'd  let  me  in  just  a  few  moments, 
I'm  quite  sure  I  could  tell  you  some  things  that  would 
interest  you." 

"Oho!"  said  the  woman  in  the  dirty  red  dress, 
staring  at  her  very  hard.  Her  bony  cheeks  began 
to  flush  angrily.  "You  could,  could  you?  Yes, 
I  don't  doubt  it."  She  grasped  the  girl  by  the  arm 
suddenly,  pushing  her  against  the  side  of  the  door 
way,  and  began  to  shout:  "Officer!  Officer!"  and 
to  wave  her  free  hand. 

A  policeman  crossed  the  street,  followed  by  three 
small  boys,  and  with  a  leisurely  tread  mounted  the 
steps,  swinging  his  stick.  He  was  chewing  something 
— gum,  perhaps. 

"Now  then,"  he  demanded,  cheerily,  "what's 
wrong,  hey?"  He  looked  from  one  to  the  other. 
"Lodger  tryin'  to  jump  her  board  bill?" 

The  woman  in  the  dirty  red  dress  was  in  a  state 
of  fury,  quite  inexplicable.  The  circumstances 
didn't  seem  to  warrant  it  at  all.  But  perhaps  there 
had  been  previous  circumstances  that  we  know 
nothing  about. 

"This  here  red-headed  hussy,"  she  cried,  angrily, 
"comes  and  asks  for  lodgings.  I'm  full  up,  and  I 
told  her  so,  but  she  wouldn't  go  away.  Hung  on 
to  me  and  says  she  could  tell  me  something  in 
teresting  if  I'd  like  to  know  it.  You  bet  she  could! 
It's  easy  enough  to  see  what  her  line  of  work  is. 

[229] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

I  don't  want  any  o*  her  kind  here,  and  I  told  her 
so.  This  here's  a  respectable  house." 

The  policeman  stopped  chewing  for  an  instant,  and 
looked  hard  at  Hope,  who  leaned  against  the  door 
way,  very  white,  and  trembling  from  head  to  foot. 
She  still  didn't  understand,  but  she  was  dimly  aware 
of  unknown  horrors — abominations  that  poisoned 
the  air. 

"  You  better  beat  it !"  the  policeman  said.  "  Noth- 
in'  doin'  here.  Beat  it  before  I  have  to  run  you  in!" 

"But  why,  why?"  she  cried  out,  desperately.  Her 
breath  was  beginning  to  catch  in  sobs.  "What 
in  the  world  is  wrong?  What  does  this — this  dread 
ful  woman  mean?  Why  shouldn't  I  call  and  ask  to 
speak  to  her?  This  house  is  on  my  list.  This  is 
my  district.  I  wanted  her  to  come  to  the  meeting 
to-night." 

The  policeman  and  the  woman  in  the  dirty  red 
dress  looked  at  each  other,  and  the  woman  began 
to  turn  a  little  pale. 

"What  was  it  you  come  for  to  speak  to  the  lady 
about?"  the  policeman  asked,  rubbing  the  back  of 
his  head. 

And  Hope  said:  "The  Suffrage,  of  course!  What 
did  you  think?" 

But  the  woman  cried  shrilly: 

"That's  a  lie.  She  wanted  a  room.  She  says  to 
me —  Why — look  at  her  bag!  What's  she  doing 
with  a  grip,  I'd  like  to  ask  you?  You  can't  come 
over  me  with — " 

[230] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"You  shut  up!"  said  the  policeman,  abruptly, 
and  turned  once  more  to  the  girl,  who  had  shrunk 
back  before  this  new  violence.  "Excuse  me,  Miss! 
But  just  what  was  you  doing  with  a  valise?  It 
ain't  quite  the  usual  thing  to  go  suffragettin'  with  a 
grip,  is  it?  And  the  lady  says  you  asked  for  a  room." 

Hope  almost  laughed.  She  was  for  an  instant 
more  angry  than  frightened.  "That's  ridiculous. 
What  should  I  want  of  a  room?  And  as  for  my  bag, 
it  has  pamphlets  and  papers  in  it:  the  kind  of  thing 
we  leave  behind  for  them  to  read."  She  fumbled 
with  the  snap  of  the  black  bag,  which  stuck  at  first, 
so  that  the  officer  had  to  come  to  her  aid;  then  it 
gave  way  suddenly,  and  a  handful  of  little  green 
and  yellow  and  white  booklets  spilled  out  on  the 
doorstep. 

The  policeman  said,  "My  Gawd!"  and  went  down 
on  his  knees  to  pick  the  things  up.  He  put  them 
back  again  into  the  black  bag  and  turned  with  a 
flushed  face  to  the  woman  in  the  doorway.  "You're 
the  one  that  ought  to  get  run  in  for  this  job!"  he 
said,  nodding  his  head  at  her.  "And  if  this  here 
young  lady  wants  to  back  me  up,  and  make  the 
complaint,  I'll  do  it,  too.  You  ought  to  be  ashamed 
o'  yourself." 

The  woman  made  a  kind  of  face  at  him  like  a 
cornered  animal,  and  she  snarled  something  vicious 
that  neither  of  the  other  two  could  make  out. 
But  she  was  white  and  scared,  and  after  wavering 
an  instant  slammed  the  door  suddenly  in  their 

[231] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

faces,  and  they  heard  her  heels  on  the  stone  floor  of 
the  hall  clacking  away  into  the  distance. 

"I'm  sorry,  Miss!"  the  policeman  said,  rubbing 
the  back  of  his  head  once  more  in  great  embarrass 
ment.  "These  women  hereabouts  don't  know  a 
lady  when  they  see  one.  O'  course,  I  had  to  come 
when  she  called  me.'* 

Hope  scrubbed  at  her  eyes  with  a  damp  ball  of 
handkerchief  and  tried  to  smile;  but  she  was  still 
trembling  violently,  and  her  breath  still  caught  in 
sobs.  "Oh,  it's  all  right!  I  don't  mind.  Thank 
you  very  much — for  helping.  I  can't  imagine  what 
that  dreadful  person  thought  or  meant.  Do  you 
suppose  I  could  find  a  cab?  I'd  like  to  go  home, 
please!" 

"Sure!  sure!"  said  the  policeman,  heartily.  "You 
follow  along  toward  Third  Avenue,  and  I'll  send  one 
back  to  you.  .  .  .  Here,  you!  Clear  out  o'  this!" 
He  spoke  to  the  three  little  boys  who  stood  staring 
at  the  bottom  of  the  steps,  and  who  broke  and  ran. 
But  when  he  had  gone  a  little  way  he  turned  back 
and  shook  his  head  at  her.  "If  I  was  you,  Miss, 
I  wouldn't  try  neighborhoods  like  this  here  any 
more.  You  ain't  quite  the  kind  for  it,  and  who 
ever  sent  you  ought  to  know  it,  too.  They  oughtn't 
to  send  young  ladies  to  places  like  this." 

"Oh,  thank  you!"  said  Hope.  "But  we— don't 
mind  so  very  much.  It's  all  in  a  good  cause,  you 
see." 

But  the  officer  wasn't  convinced. 

[232] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"  It  ain't  that  altogether,  ma'am,  if  I  might  make 
so  bold.  There's  more  to  it  than  that.  These  peo 
ple  here,  they  ain't  used  to  your  kind,  and  they 
won't  listen  to  you.  I  ain't  saying  nothing  against 
Lady  Sufferage.  That  may  be  all  right,  but  the 
ones  as  run  it  ought  to  know  enough  to  send  the 
right  kind  of  people  to  the  right  wards.  When 
you  come  here  the  women  you  want  to  talk  politics 
to,  they're  lookin*  so  hard  at  your  hat  and  the  way 
your  dress  is  made,  and  the  way  your  gloves  fit,  that 
they  haven't  got  no  attention  left  for  what  you  come 
about.  Your  bosses  ought  to  send  out  nice  plain, 
middle-aged  ladies  that  nobody  wants  to  look  at. 
Then  they'll  get  listened  to."  The  policeman 
nodded  very  emphatically  at  the  end  of  this  little 
lecture,  then  seemed  all  at  once  to  become  em 
barrassed,  for  he  turned  red  and  saluted,  and  said 
hastily :  "  Just  you  wait  a  bit,  Miss !  I'll  send  a  cab," 
and  went  away  at  a  kind  of  dignified  trot. 

And  presently  a  hansom  wheeled  round  the  corner; 
and  Hope,  with  the  last  of  her  strength,  climbed  into 
it,  and  drove  home. 

It  was  a  bad  beginning  to  an  important  day. 

She  shut  herself  into  her  rooms,  and,  since  she 
was  much  too  wrought  up  to  sleep  at  that  mid- 
afternoon  hour,  tried,  in  all  the  ways  she  could  devise, 
to  divert  her  thoughts.  She  opened  a  new  book 
on  the  Living  Wage,  which  had  recently  come  to  her, 
but  its  argument  wanted  a  closer  attention  than  she 
could  just  now  compel.  She  found  on  her  shelves 

[233] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

a  copy  of  The  Prisoner  of  Zenda,  over  which  she  had 
so  many  times  thrilled  and  palpitated,  and  made  a 
vain  attempt  to  read,  beginning  in  the  middle.  She 
rehearsed  her  speech  for  the  evening.  But  there 
kept  stealing  in  before  her  eyes  that  little  gray, 
hollow-eyed,  hopeless  man  who  was  out  of  work  and 
couldn't  vote  himself  in  again. 

"Five  weeks,  meine  gnddige  Fraulein;  und  soon 
ve  starve." 

There  kept  haunting  her  a  terrible  shrew  in  a 
dirty  red  dress,  who  breathed  abominations  and 
shouted  for  a  policeman.  It  was  intolerable,  and 
after  an  hour  she  rang  for  her  maid  and  told  the 
woman  to  ask  Mrs.  Darnley's  maid  for  one  of  the 
sleeping  tablets  that  lady  occasionally  used — sul- 
phonal  or  trional,  or  something  of  the  sort.  She 
swallowed  one,  and,  being  quite  unused  to  such  aids, 
felt  its  effect  almost  at  once,  dropping  into  a  heavy 
sleep  and  waking  only  when  she  was  called  at  half 
past  six. 

Her  nerves  were  rested  and  much  quieted,  there 
could  be  no  doubt  of  that;  but  she  felt  a  sense  of 
profound  depression  that  seemed  as  much  physical 
as  mental,  and  was  glad  to  remember  that  the 
Darnleys  were  dining  out,  and  that  she  might  have 
her  meal  on  a  tray  in  her  room. 

Little  Mrs.  Brooks  called  for  her  shortly  before 
eight,  full  of  apologies  for  not  having  turned  up  that 
afternoon,  and  they  drove  together  to  the  hall  in 
East  Fiftieth  Street.  Hope  was  silent  all  the  way, 

[234] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

and  so  pale  that  Mrs.  Brooks  looked  at  her  anxiously 
more  than  once.  She  imagined  her  friend  frightened 
in  advance  over  the  evening's  ordeal,  but  she  was 
wrong.  That  particular  and  crowning  horror  merci 
fully  hadn't  yet  set  in.  Hope  was  only  depressed — 
more  depressed  and  disheartened  than  she  could 
remember  to  have  been  before  in  all  her  life. 

The  fright  began  after  they  had  arrived  at 
O'Rourke's  Hall  and  were  speaking  to  the  dozen 
other  women  already  gathered  on  the  brightly  lighted 
platform  before  a  slowly  filling  house.  It  was  a 
scene  familiar  enough  to  her  by  this  time.  She  had 
sat  on  platforms  half  a  dozen  times,  at  monthly  or 
special  meetings.  But  this  night  there  was,  from 
the  first,  an  awful  difference.  The  chairman  and 
the  organization  officers  and  committee  members 
looked  at  her,  she  thought,  with  a  peculiar  anxious 
intensity.  They  seemed  to  be  examining  her.  It 
was  as  if  they  said:  "Are  you  going  to  be  all  right? 
Are  you  going  to  get  through  it,  or  are  you  going  to 
break  down  like  that  Johnson  girl  last  month?" 
Miss  King  had  not  yet  arrived;  but  Hope  knew  that 
she  would  come  later  on,  and  might  even  speak 
after  the  regular  program  was  over.  She  herself 
was  to  take  up  her  subject  fifth  in  order  of  the 
speakers,  so  the  chairman  told  her. 

She  sat  down  in  the  second  row  of  chairs  beside 
Emily  Brooks,  and  became  all  at  once  aware  that 
she  was  cold,  though  the  place  had  seemed,  when 
she  entered  it,  stifling.  She  began  to  shiver,  and 

16  [235] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

it  must  have  been  apparent,  for  Emily  Brooks  laid 
a  hand  on  her  arm  and  laughed,  saying: 

"You'll  be  all  right  once  they've  begun.  It's  the 
waiting  about  that  tries  people,  I  think." 

Then  there  came  a  burst  of  rather  noisy  applause 
that  stopped  suddenly,  and  Hope  saw  that  the  chair 
man  had  begun  to  speak. 

She  tried  to  compose  herself  and  listen,  but  either 
her  ears  or  her  brain  had  gone  a  little  mad  and 
was  playing  tricks,  for  the  words  were  quite  mean 
ingless  to  her — just  noises  like  words  in  a  strange 
language.  Then  she  began  to  rehearse  hi  her  mind 
her  own  speech,  and  got  halfway  through  it  with 
great  ease,  but  stuck  there  absolutely,  and  was 
unable  to  remember  a  word  or  a  thought  more. 
She  was  terrified,  and  broke  out  in  a  cold  perspira 
tion,  then  remembered  that  in  the  pocket  of  her  coat 
she  had  some  notes  on  a  card.  She  fished  this  out, 
and  with  its  aid  got  through  the  rest  of  the  argu 
ment  without  further  trouble. 

"I  must  hold  it  in  my  hand,"  she  said  to  herself, 
meaning  the  card.  "When  I  get  up  I  must  hold  it 
in  my  hand — in  case — " 

Under  cover  of  applause  from  the  house  (the  chair 
man  was  finishing)  she  must  have  spoken  aloud,  for 
Mrs.  Brooks  turned  and  said: 

"I  beg  your  pardon!" 

But  Hope  smiled  at  her  whitely  and  shook  her 
head. 

The  first  speaker,  a  pleasant,  middle-aged  woman, 

[236] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

with  wit  and  a  sense  of  fun  and  a  conversational 
manner,  was  up  now  and  getting  on  very  well  indeed, 
as  frequent  bursts  of  laughter  and  applause  testi 
fied.  Hope  looked  at  the  woman,  and  at  that  dim 
area  of  upturned  faces  that  looked  so  like  strange 
pink,  well-grown  vegetables  in  a  patch — melons,  per 
haps — they  were  so  symmetrical  and  expressionless 
and  unhuman.  She  should  have  been  cheered  by 
the  prevailing  good-humor,  but  she  wasn't.  She  was 
cold  and  sick,  and  she  could  feel  her  heart  beating 
in  slow,  tremulous  throbs.  She  was  barely  conscious 
of  it  when  the  first  speaker  sat  down  and  the 
second  rose  to  deal  with  the  "Foreign  Vote"  argu 
ment. 

Once  she  remembered,  with  a  kind  of  suffering 
wonder,  how  confident  she  had  been  over  this  even 
ing,  how  easy  a  success  it  was  to  have  proved.  She 
wanted  to  laugh;  but  her  lips  were  stiff.  And  once 
afterward  she  realized  quite  plainly  that  if  she 
couldn't  pull  herself  together  within  the  next  few 
minutes  she  was  lost  —  done  for.  So  with  some 
deliberation,  she  put  all  her  surroundings  and  all 
they  meant  quite  out  of  her  mind,  and  summoned 
in  their  place  the  image  of  Roger  Bacon. 

Little  Mrs.  Brooks,  sitting  anxiously  by,  saw  the 
white  strain  go  all  at  once  out  of  Hope's  face,  and 
was  relieved,  for  she  had  been  afraid  the  girl  would 
faint  away.  It  was  like  being  waked  suddenly  from 
sleep  by  cries  and  clamor.  She  had  lost  all  account 
of  time.  Speaker  had  followed  speaker,  but  she  had 

[287] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

neither  seen  nor  heard.  Now,  at  last,  she  heard. 
It  is  unlikely  that  the  chairman's  calm  voice  was 
raised  above  its  ordinary  tone,  but  to  Hope  it  was 
like  some  one  shouting  hi  her  ear. 

"The  so-called  *  Ballots  and  Bullets'  argument — 
if,  indeed  it  can  be  called  an  argument — is  next  on 
the  evening's  list,  and  will  be  answered  by  Miss 
Hope  Standish." 

At  first  she  was  quite  unable  to  stir  hand  or  foot, 
though  little  Mrs.  Brooks  pulled  at  her  arm,  whis 
pering:  "It's  your  turn.  You  must  get  up  now!" 
Then  the  dreadful  shivering,  which  had  been  quiet 
for  ever  so  long,  recommenced,  and  she  felt  very 
cold  and  a  little  sick.  She  looked  vacantly  before 
her  out  over  that  preposterous  melon  patch  of  an 
auditorium,  and  a  wild  and  awful  change  had  taken 
place  in  the  big  pink  melons:  they  had  sprouted 
eyes,  hundreds  of  pairs  of  cruel,  staring,  glassy  eyes 
that  sought  her  out  and  fixed  themselves  upon  her. 
The  light  from  the  stage  shone  on  them,  and  they 
glittered  as  one  imagines  the  eyes  of  wolves  to  glitter 
when  they  close  in,  a  whole  pack,  upon  a  helpless 
victim. 

Little  Mrs.  Brooks  tugged  once  more  at  her  arm, 
saying  almost  aloud: 

"  Get  up !     It's  your  turn !    You  must  speak  now !" 

And  the  words  seemed  in  some  mysterious  way 
to  have  broken  the  spell  that  held  the  girl  motion 
less.  She  knew  all  at  once,  and  even  with  a  sort  of 
desperate  tranquillity,  that  what  she  had  come  there 

[238] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

to  do  could  not  be  done.  She  rose  and  bent  above  her 
friend. 

"I  can't  do  it!  Please  tell  the  chairman!  I'm 
going  to  faint,  I  think,  and  I  must  get  out  into  the 
air." 

Even  then  Emily  Brooks  would  have  held  her, 
but  she  pulled  free  and  walked  back  through  the 
little  gangway  between  the  platform  chairs  to  the 
door  at  the  rear  of  the  stage.  As  she  went,  half 
blindly,  she  was  aware — or  a  part  of  her  attention 
was — of  Miss  Alice  King  pushing  her  way  forward 
toward  the  speakers  table,  and  she  knew  that  Aunt 
Alice  was  bent  upon  saving  the  situation. 

Three  or  four  women  spoke  to  Hope  as  she  left 
the  platform,  asking  if  she  was  ill,  and  proffering 
their  services;  but  she  pressed  still  blindly  past  them 
and  out  through  the  door.  The  door  opened  into 
a  tiny  anteroom  and  gave  beyond  that  upon  a  nar 
row  passage  that  ran  out  between  the  walls  of  two 
buildings  to  the  street;  but  in  the  anteroom  there 
was  another  door  as  well,  that  led  into  the  audi 
torium,  and,  as  Hope  leaned  for  a  moment  against 
the  wall,  dizzy  and  ill,  this  last  door  opened  and 
closed  quickly  upon  Roger  Bacon. 

There  was  no  place  in  her  for  surprise — only  relief 
and  joy  and  comfort.  She  stretched  out  one  arm 
to  him  and  began  to  sob.  She  said: 

"Oh,  Roger,  take  me  away  from  this  dreadful 
place!  Take  me  home!" 


CHAPTER  XVm 

HOPE  lay  back  in  a  corner  of  the  taxi-cab  and 
closed  her  eyes.  She  was  still  swept  by  waves 
of  trembling  from  head  to  foot,  and  she  still  felt 
a  little  sick,  but,  above  all,  tired — exhausted — so 
done  up  that  she  could  hardly  stir.  It  was  as  if 
she  had  literally  run  from  the  lights  and  voices,  and 
from  the  thousand  glittering  eyes  of  that  pack  of 
wolves,  until  she  could  run  no  longer  and  had  dropped 
panting.  She  looked,  as  it  were,  with  terrified  eyes 
behind  her,  but  the  lights  and  the  voices  and  the 
eyes  were  a  long  way  off  now.  She  was  safe  from 
them. 

She  spoke  presently. 

"How  did  you  happen  to  be  there,  Roger?"  But 
it  was  hi  so  low  a  tone  that  he  had  to  bend  close  to 
hear. 

"I  was  at  the  opera.  I  went  to  the  Darnleys* 
box  after  the  first  act.  They'd  just  arrived.  And 
Caroline  said  you  were  to  speak  at  this  place.  So 
I  left  at  once  and  came  over  here." 

She  said,  "Oh!"  but  didn't  speak  again,  and 
Bacon  said  no  more  until  the  taxi-cab  drew  up  in 
Fifth  Avenue.  She  didn't  ask  him  to  come  in;  he 

[240] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

came  without  permission,  and  she  expected  him  to. 
One  of  the  footmen  admitted  them,  and  they  went 
up  to  the  drawing-room  together. 

Hope  stood  uncertainly  in  the  middle  of  the  room, 
a  little  dazed  still. 

"It  was — unspeakable!"  she  said,  unconscious  of 
the  extreme  aptness  of  the  word.  "It  was  too 
hideous.  They  stared  at  me  so !"  She  put  her  hands 
up  over  her  face  and  began  to  cry  silently  just  like 
a  child. 

And  at  that  Bacon,  as  if  he  couldn't  bear  it, 
called  out  upon  her  sharply: 

"Hope!    Hope!" 

She  found  herself  again,  without  surprise,  cry 
ing  on  the  front  of  his  coat,  and  hadn't  the  least 
idea  how  she  had  come  there.  She  accepted  the 
phenomenon  as  sent  from  Heaven,  and  wept  on  him 
as  comfortably  as  she  might  have  wept  on  Caroline 
Darnley  or  George  or  Aunt  Alice  King. 

That  was  at  first — for  a  little  undeterminable 
space  of  time  which  probably  wasn't  more  than  a 
minute  or  two,  while  she  was  still  absorbed  in 
her  troubles  and  the  vast  relief  of  being  out  of 
them.  But  presently  she  became  aware  of  something 
very  different  and  strange.  She  became  aware  that 
Roger  Bacon's  arm  was  round  her,  and  that  either 
his  heart  or  hers  was  beating  very  hard  against  her 
breast.  She  tried  to  push  herself  away,  but  the 
arm  was  strong  and  wouldn't  let  her  go.  She 
looked  up  at  him,  and  his  face  was  bent  close  above 

[241] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

hers,  so  close  that  it  made  her  gasp,  and  it  was  grave 
and  tender,  with  unfathomable  eyes.  She  said, 
whispering: 

"Oh,  Roger!    Roger!" 

"I've  loved  you  so  long,  so  long!"  he  said.  "And 
I've  waited  and  waited.  I  won't  let  you  go  now." 

And  Hope  gave  a  little  sobbing  laugh. 

"I  don't  want  you  to." 

She  was  made  for  love.  The  necessity  of  it  was 
in  all  her  being.  It  was  her  nature  to  give  and  to 
take  largely — with  lavish  hands.  And  she  had  held 
love  away  from  her  too  long,  thrusting  it  out  of  her 
path,  setting  up  obstacles  against  it,  turning  her 
face  deliberately  away  from  its  face.  To  employ 
another  figure,  she  had  dammed  it  out  from  her  with 
walls  and  dikes.  Now  the  defenses  were  down  at 
last,  and  it  swept  over  her  like  a  flood,  as  dammed 
out  waters  must  do. 

The  horrors  of  this  day  and  night,  the  long  months 
of  toil  and  discouragement,  fled  from  her  conscious 
ness  like  bad  dreams  of  a  morning,  and  she  was  all 
at  once  full  of  something  sweet  and  tumultuous  and 
thrilling  and  strange.  She  said: 

"Hold  me  up,  Roger!     My  knees  are  going." 

He  nearly  crushed  her  against  him,  and  she  was 
glad.  He  bent  his  head  and  kissed  her,  and  she 
must  have  gone  a  little  faint,  because  the  world 
swam  about  her  and  turned  dark  for  a  moment  or 
two. 

She  discovered  that  one  of  her  arms  was  over  his 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

shoulder — almost  round  his  neck.  That  was  very 
unmaidenly,  but  she  didn't  care,  for  she  was  utterly 
possessed  by  the  cataclysmic  miracle  which  had 
befallen  her  and  by  the  wonder  of  it. 

He  was  speaking  at  intervals — hurried,  rather 
breathless  incoherencies — but  she  heard  only  oc 
casional  though  highly  satisfactory  words.  He 
seemed  to  be  calling  her  the  most  surprising  and 
delightful  names — to  be  dealing,  in  extreme  hyper 
bole,  with  her  personal  qualities  and  his  apprecia 
tion  of  them.  And  she  believed  he  was  kissing  her 
hair,  too,  which  was  certainly  very  romantic  of 
him. 

Once  or  twice  before,  in  a  softened  mood,  she  had 
noticed  admiringly  how  strong  he  was — what  a 
splendid  figure  of  a  man.  She  felt  it  again  now  with 
a  kind  of  wondering  delight.  If  she  should  beat 
him  with  her  fists  it  would  be  just  like  beating  against 
a  wall;  and  if  she  should  try  to  get  away  from  him, 
out  of  his  arms,  she  would  have  the  chance  of  a 
little  child  struggling  with  a  giant.  There  seemed 
to  her  to  be  something  especially  thrilling  about 
that  physical  might  of  his.  It  filled  her  with  a  kind 
of  mingled  terror  and  ecstasy.  She  was  conscious 
for  the  first  time  in  her  life  of  the  triumphant  joy 
of  surrender.  She  said: 

"I  think  I'll  have  to  sit  down,  Roger,  I'm  all — 
wobbly." 

So  they  went  to  a  big  seat  that  stood  before  the 
fireplace,  the  only  comfortable  piece  of  furniture 

[243] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

in  that  rather  stiff  Louis  XVI.  room,  and  Bacon 
prodded  the  red,  crumbling  logs  into  a  blaze.  She 
sat  within  the  circle  of  his  arms,  her  head  in  the  hol 
low  of  his  shoulder.  She  was  very  tired  but  very 
blissful,  too,  and  no  longer  nervous  or  frightened. 
She  felt  exceedingly  at  home,  as  if  it  were  quite  the 
ordinary  thing  to  sit  before  a  fire  with  her  head 
against  Roger  Bacon's  shoulder.  The  clock  struck 
ten,  and  that  meant  that  they  wouldn't  be  inter 
rupted  for  a  long,  long  time. 

"And  now,"  Hope  said,  with  a  little  sigh,  "now 
you  might  tell  me  all  about  it." 

He  told  her  that  he  had  loved  her  from  that  first 
moment  on  the  terrace  of  the  Casino  at  Trouville. 
But  she  said: 

"Pooh!  I  loved  you  years  ago  in  New  Haven 
when  I  was  a  child.  I  nearly  had  heart  failure  every 
time  you  came  in  sight.  Are  you  going  to  be  beaten 
by  a  girl?" 

He  wasn't.  He  explained  with  perfect  truth  how 
the  child  in  New  Haven  had  haunted  his  memory 
ever  since  his  university  days  and  put  him  off  all 
other  girls  ever  since.  That  was  better,  and  she 
let  him  go  on.  She  seemed  especially  taken  by  his 
opinion  of  her  personal  appearance,  and  made  him 
repeat  some  of  it. 

"Of  course,  it's  not  in  the  least  true,  but  it's  such 
a  comfort  to  hear  about.  You  might  have  hated 
red  hair,  you  know,  and  then  I  should  have  had  to 
dye  it  black,  which  would  be  a  nuisance." 

[244] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Time  passed  like  a  fleeing  shadow,  and  the  clock 
struck  the  half  hour.  The  logs  in  the  fireplace 
crumbled  again  into  red  glow  and  wanted  prodding, 
but  Roger  couldn't  be  spared  to  attend  to  them. 
Then  Hope  decided  that  she  must  make  a  series  of 
confessions. 

He  laughed,  stilling  her  speech  in  the  traditional 
way,  and  she  seemed  to  lack  the  spirit  to  go  on. 

"Oh,  Roger,  how  can  1  talk  seriously  when  you 
make  things  go  round  and  round  like  that?  You've 
got  to  listen.  It's  important." 

She  told  him  about  the  amorous  undergraduate 
gentleman  whom  she  had  tempted  at  a  dinner  party 
in  New  Haven.  She  shamefully  had  forgotten  even 
his  name. 

"There's  no  possible  excuse  for  me,"  she  said. 
"It  was  just  a  cold,  deliberate  experiment.  I  didn't 
care  that  about  him.  I  wanted  to  find  out  what  it 
was  like  to  be  kissed.  Afterward  I  was  ashamed, 
but  that  doesn't  excuse  it." 

Roger  Bacon  seemed  inclined  to  treat  this  horror 
lightly,  but  he  was  grave  enough  when  she  began 
the  story  of  Mr.  Archibald  Traill.  It  was  not  an 
easy  story  to  tell.  It  wanted  a  great  deal  of  ex 
planation,  but  luckily  Bacon  was  not  a  dull  man 
nor  unimaginative.  He  got  pretty  well,  at  the  be 
ginning,  the  essential  truth  of  the  thing — an  eager, 
adventurous  young  mind  suddenly  introduced  to 
ideas  of  freedom,  and  running  away  with  them  like 
a  colt  suddenly  turned  out  of  the  stable  into  the  open 

[245] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

world.  That  didn't  help  the  anarchist's  case  much, 
however,  and  he  was  severe  with  young  Mr.  Traill. 
He  called  him  some  hard  names.  But  Hope,  safe 
in  her  new-found  tower  of  happiness,  could  afford 
to  be  generous. 

"Don't  be  too  hard  on  him,  Roger!  Remember, 
I  was  a  little  fool !  I  led  him  on.  And  in  his  dread 
ful  fashion  he  was  sincere.  He  really  meant  it  all. 
I  discovered  that  the  last  time  I  saw  him  in  New 
Haven,  just  before — my  mother  died.  .  .  .  Let's  not 
talk  about  him.  I've  told  you  the  whole  thing. 
Now  I  want  to  forget  it  forever  if  I  can.  I  can't 
unlive  it,  and  perhaps  that's  just  as  well.  Perhaps 
it  taught  me  something — like  a  puppy  eating  soap 
and  being  sick.  But  I  don't  want  to  think  about  it. 
I  want  to  be  happy." 

She  turned  suddenly  about — she  had  been  sitting 
on  one  foot,  a  schoolgirl  habit  never  to  this  day 
entirely  discarded — so  that  she  knelt  on  the  cush 
ioned  seat  facing  him,  and  held  him  by  the  shoulders 
with  her  hands. 

"Roger,  you  mustn't  think  that  because  I  sit  here 
quite  quietly  talking  and  talking  as  if  we'd  been— 
like  this  for  years,  you  mustn't  think  I'm  too — 
calm  about  us.  You  mustn't  think  I'm  taking  it 
all  for  granted.  Because  I'm  not.  I'm  excited  and 
hot  and  cold  and  thrilly  all  down  to  my  toes.  It's 
the  most  wonderful  thing —  Oh,  I  can't  say  it!  I 
sha'n't  sleep  a  wink  to-night — nor  for  weeks.  And, 
Roger,  I  love  you!" 

[246] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

Tears  started  all  at  once  in  her  eyes,  and  she  hid 
her  face  against  him. 

She  heard  him  again  stammering  in  her  ear  those 
hurried  and  breathless  incoherencies — calling  her 
names — trying  in  vain  to  find  words  for  what  he 
thought  about  her.  And  she  crept  back  into  the 
circle  of  his  arms  and  sat  there  silent,  and  the  clock 
struck  eleven. 

George  and  Caroline  Darnley  found  them  there 
presently,  having  come  straight  home  from  the 
opera  because  Caroline  was  tired.  The  two  before 
the  fire  were  taken  rather  by  surprise,  for  they  hadn't 
heard  the  bell  ring — or  perhaps  George  got  in  with 
his  latch  key.  They  were  suddenly  aware  of  voices 
in  the  door  of  the  drawing-room,  and  sprang  with 
some  haste  to  their  feet,  looking,  no  doubt,  flushed 
and  guilty. 

George  Darnley  said,  "What  ho!"  and  burst  into 
a  chuckle  of  laughter.  But  his  wife  stood  staring, 
with  one  glove  half  off. 

Roger  looked  at  Hope.  "Well  caught,  I  think; 
we  might  as  well  tell  them." 

And  at  that  Mrs.  Darnley  cried:  "Oh,  you  dears! 
Oh,  you  blessed  dears!  You've  been  and  done  it. 
I  am  so  glad."  She  ran  to  Hope,  and  the  two  clung 
to  each  other  and  shed  a  few  ready  tears,  the  while 
George  Darnley  bellowed  about  the  room  like  a  joy 
ful  elephant. 

He  began  furiously  to  ring  the  bell,  stopping 
every  now  and  then  to  return  to  the  younger  man 

[247] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

and  smite  him  on  the  back  in  a  kind  of  ecstasy  of 
compliment  and  congratulation. 

"Drink!  I  want  drink!  We've  got  to  drink  the 
health  of  this  thing,  you  know.  Here!  Bring  up 
a  bottle  of  that  Delbec.  Got  any  chilled?  And 
four  glasses.  Sharp!" 

His  wife  said,  "George,  don't  be  an  ass!" 

But  he  would  be  if  he  chose.  "Don't  you  talk 
to  me!  I'm  going  to  drink  to  these  two  infants, 
here  and  now,  before  anybody  else  beats  me  to  it. 
You  can  have  yours  in  hot  milk  if  you  want." 

The  champagne  arrived  (there  was  a  bottle  chilled, 
happily),  and  George  D.,  who  was  hah*  beside  him 
self  with  delight,  and  Caroline,  still  on  the  verge  of 
sentimental  tears,  drank  to  the  lovers  a  wish  for 
the  longest_and  happiest  life  and  love  that  ever 
were  lived  or  loved  in  all  the  world.  And  they  made 
them  drink  to  each  other,  too,  and  George  kissed 
the  girl  on  both  cheeks,  and  wanted  to  make  a  speech, 
but  wasn't  allowed. 

Roger  Bacon  looked  very  handsome  and  gallant 
and  proud,  though  modest  as  well,  and  accepted  the 
honors  showered  upon  him  in  just  the  spirit  that 
might  have  been  expected  of  him;  but  Hope  had 
fallen  into  a  kind  of  flushed,  smiling  daze,  and  spoke 
hardly  a  word  through  it  all.  So  that  Mrs.  Darnley 
saw  presently  how  tired  she  was  and  overwrought, 
and  bore  her  off  upstairs  to  bed. 

"You  might  let  'em  say  good  night  to  each  other 
alone!"  her  husband  grumbled.  "You've  got  no 

[248] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

romance  in  you,  Carrie.  They've  never  said  good 
night  to  each  other  properly  in  all  their  lives." 

But  Mrs.  Darnley  pooh-poohed  that,  becoming, 
now  that  she  had  undertaken  the  role,  very  deter 
mined  and  bustling  and  maternal  and  fussy.  They 
could  bill  and  coo  another  day,  she  said. 

Hope  went  up  to  her  lover  and  touched  him  on 
the  breast  with  her  hand. 

"Good  night,  dear  Roger!" 

They  stood  so  for  a  moment,  close,  looking  into 
each  other's  eyes;  then  she  left  him  and  went  away 
with  Mrs.  Darnley. 

She  was  tired.  She  knew  it  as  soon  as  she  had 
set  foot  on  the  stairs.  She  was  so  tired  that  her 
knees  trembled.  She  was  half  dead  with  exhaustion 
and  fell  into  a  sleep  that  was  almost  like  coma  the 
moment  her  head  touched  the  pillow.  But  she 
waked  herself  once  in  a  semi-hysterical  fit  of  laughter. 

"Good  heavens,  he  never  asked  me  to  marry 
him!" 

Then  she  fell  asleep  once  more,  and  saw  in  dreams 
Roger  Bacon's  face  as  it  had  been  when  she  looked 
up  at  it,  standing  in  his  arms,  and  found  it  so  close 
above  her. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

HOPE  awoke  late  the  next  morning,  and  when 
she  had  rung,  her  maid  brought  in  a  great 
armful  of  yellow-pink  roses — the  most  preposterous 
quantity — and  a  note.  She  tore  it  open,  read  it 
twice,  hid  it  under  the  pillows,  and  lay  still  for  a 
while,  with  her  face  among  the  blossoms. 

Then  she  demanded  a  pencil  and  paper,  and  wrote 
a  note  and  sent  it  by  hand. 

"I  love  your  beautiful  roses,  and  I  love  you,  and 
I  send  you  three  kisses.  Will  you  please  ask  me 
to  marry  you?" 

She  had  breakfast  in  bed,  and  while  she  was  try 
ing  to  eat  it  Emily  Brooks  came  in  to  cheer  her  up 
over  last  evening's  disaster.  Hope  listened  for  a 
bit  to  her  words  of  sympathy  and  encouragement, 
and  then  stopped  her. 

"I  mustn't  let  you  go  on  thinking  me  down 
hearted.  You've  been  such  a  dear  to  me  all  these 
weeks — so  patient  and  sweet!  I  want  you  to  know 
first  of  anybody  outside  the  family.  I've  been 
getting  engaged — at  least,  I  think  so.  It  happened 
quite  unexpectedly  last  night.  And  so  I've  some 
thing  else  to  think  of." 

[250] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Mrs.  Brooks  quite  beamed  with  delight.  She 
was  almost  as  demonstrative  over  it  as  George 
Darnley  had  been. 

"  How  splendid !  How  perfectly  splendid !  I  can't 
begin  to  tell  you  how  glad  I  am — that  is,  if  the  man 
is  as  nice  as  he  ought  to  be.  And  I'm  sure  he  is, 
or  you  wouldn't  have  chosen  him — I  mean,  been 
chosen  by  him.  I  suppose  this  ends  The  Cause  with 
you  for  the  present,  at  least?" 

Hope  said:  "Oh! ...  I  really  hadn't  thought.  .  .  . 
Yes,  I  suppose  so.  Oh  yes,  indeed!  Roger's  not  a 
bit  in  sympathy  with  The  Cause." 

She  realized  quite  suddenly  that  this  question 
just  hadn't  arisen  between  them.  There  had  been 
no  talk  of  it  at  all.  It  had  been  forgotten.  The 
thought  turned  her  grave  for  a  moment.  But  not 
longer.  She  was  too  full  of  the  new  wonder  of  love 
for  doubts  or  regrets.  Just  for  an  instant  she  saw, 
in  a  kind  of  vision,  a  face  that  might  have  been  the 
composite  great  face  of  all  womankind.  And  it 
was  sorrowful,  and  dark  with  dumb  reproach.  It 
fronted  her,  hanging  in  space,  and  began  to  fade  as 
if  gloom  gathered  about  it.  For  an  instant  more 
she  saw  its  eyes,  the  eyes  of  all  the  women  who 
toil;  then  it  was  quite  gone. 

Well,  it  was  only  a  morbid  fancy — a  melancholy 
souvenir  of  yesterday's  horrors  and  exhaustion. 
Farewell  to  it!  It  was  not  for  her,  this  grim  and 
difficult  work.  She  had  believed  and  fought  and 
failed.  Nobody  ever  tried  harder.  It  was  not  for 

17  [ 251  ] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

her.  She  had  given  herself  to  Roger  now,  and  when 
she  gave  she  gave  wholly.  She  was  no  niggard. 

It  would  have  been  splendid,  in  a  drab,  austere 
fashion,  to  become  of  real  and  important  service  to 
the  great  Cause — to  move  audiences,  to  stir  men's 
hearts,  to  influence  legislation,  to  be  a  second 
Alice  King.  But  she  wasn't  of  the  stuff  that  had 
gone  to  making  that  old  warrior.  She  was  other 
metal,  designed  for  other  uses.  One  did  what  one 
could  in  this  world,  according  to  one's  equipment. 

Besides,  Roger  didn't  believe  in  the  Suffrage 
movement  at  all,  and  Roger  was  neither  selfish  nor 
narrow-minded.  He  honestly  thought  that  the 
abuses  of  this  world  could  better  be  corrected  by 
other  means;  and  who  was  she  to  say  he  was  wrong? 

It  casts  some  light  on  her  new  state  of  mind  to 
point  out  that  she  already  thought  of  him  as  very 
wise,  if  not  quite  infallible. 

"Perhaps  it's  just  as  well,"  little  Mrs.  Brooks 
said.  "Just  as  well  not  to  try  to  go  on  with  district- 
canvassing  and  speaking,  I  mean.  I  told  Miss 
King,  weeks  ago,  that  I  thought  you  weren't  quite 
fitted  for  it — that  I  was  afraid  it  cost  you  too  much. 
You  see,  not  all  intelligent  women  are  fitted  for 
active  political  campaign  work  any  more  than  all 
men  are.  How  many  men  out  of  an  average  thou 
sand  could  make  a  political  speech  in  a  hall  or  be 
of  any  use  hi  house-to-house  canvassing?  Very 
few,  I'm  sure.  But  Miss  King  was  anxious,  of 
course,  to  get  you  into  the  thick  of  it." 

[252] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"Yes,"  said  Hope,  slowly'.  "Yes,  it  will  be  a 
great  disappointment  to  Aunt  Alice,  won't  it — my 
giving  things  up  to  get  married?  Oh,  dear!  .  .  . 
Well,  that  just  can't  be  helped." 

"And  besides,"  little  Mrs.  Brooks  suggested,  "it 
isn't  quite  as  if  you  were  bidding  a  solemn  farewell 
to  Woman  Suffrage  and  all  its  work  forever.  Who 
knows?  Later  on  you  may  find  yourself  able  to 
work  for  it  in  other  ways.  There's  more  than 
speech-making,  you  see." 

Hope  considered  that  doubtfully,  for  it  seemed 
to  her  she  was  doing  just  the  very  thing — bid 
ding  a  solemn  farewell  to  The  Cause  forever.  How 
ever,  as  Emily  Brooks  said,  Who  knows?  The 
future  looked  very  beautiful  to  her,  rose  and  mother- 
of-pearl;  but  she  couldn't  see  very  far  into  it.  That 
rosy  atmosphere  was  a  beautiful  mist,  and  hid  the 
outlines  of  whatever  might  be  beyond. 

"Be  happy!"  little  Mrs.  Brooks  said,  in  a  sudden 
burst  of  emotion.  "Don't  worry  yourself  over  the 
troubles  of  the  world — not  for  months  and  years 
yet!  You're  young  and  beautiful  and  in  love.  Just 
you  be  as  happy  as  ever  you  can,  and  let  the  world 
go  hang!  We  others  will  look  after  it,  somehow." 

Hope  was  much  touched  by  this,  and  a  little  in 
clined  to  weep  as  her  friend  went  away;  but,  hap 
pily,  her  attention  was  diverted  just  then  by  a  com 
munication  that  instant  arrived  by  hand: 

"I  am  on  my  knees  in  the  street  before  your 
house,  begging  you  to  marry  me.  If  you  love  me, 

[253] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

say  yes,  quickly,  before  I  get  run  over  by  a  taxi- 
cab." 

It  made  her  laugh,  but  she  hid  it  under  her  pil 
lows  along  with  the  other,  and  wrote  back: 

"I  will.  Get  up  at  once,  before  the  motor  cars 
catch  you.  And  come  to  see  me  at  four.  I  send 
you  three  more  kisses." 

Later  that  morning  she  had  another  caller, 
Roger's  sister,  Nora  Cartwright,  who  had  been  told 
the  great  news  by  telephone,  and  was  as  excited  and 
pleased  as  if,  so  she  said,  it  had  been  her  own  en 
gagement. 

"My  precious  dear,  I  was  so  afraid  he'd  never 
get  you.  And  if  he  hadn't  I  should  have  died  of  a 
broken  heart.  I  did  so  want  it  to  happen!  Will 
you  believe  me,  I  wanted  it  the  first  time  I  ever  saw 
you,  and  fell  in  love  with  you  that  day  in  the  park 
last  spring  when  I  was  walking  with  Cecil  Harding, 
and  a  wee  little  girl  ran  and  hid  her  head  hi  your 
lap?  I  said:  'If  only  Roger  could  see  that  lovely 
girl  and  drag  her  off  and  marry  her  before  she  has 
time  to  escape!'  And  when  we  all  met  at  Trou- 
ville  it  seemed  to  me  simply  arranged  by  Heaven. 
And  then  it  dragged  on  so!  I  was  frantically  im 
patient  and  afraid.  I  used  to  implore  Roger  to 
kidnap  you  in  a  motor,  or  threaten  to  shoot  himself 
if  you  didn't  marry  him  before  sunset — just  any 
desperate  thing.  You  see,  I  was  afraid  if  it  didn't 
happen  quickly  it  would  never  happen  at  all.  I 
thought  you'd  begin  to  think  of  him  as  a  sort  of 

[264] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

reliable  confidential  friend.  And  that's  so  fatal 
when  one  is  young!  .  .  .  However  did  he  at  last 
bring  it  off?"* 

"Oh,  I  think  it  just  happened,"  Hope  said.  "I 
think  it  would  have  come  sometime,  anyhow.  It 
was  bound  to.  There's  nobody  else  but  Roger  that 
I  could  feel — like  this  about.  But  I  was  so  busy 
with  other  things! — one  thing,  I  mean.  I  was  very 
serious  about  it,  and  I  wouldn't  let  anything  else 
get  into  my  mind  until  it  finally  broke  in.  Now 
that  it's  there  I  can't  imagine  how  I  kept  it  out  so 
long.  .  .  .  Do  you  think  I  shall  make  him  happy, 
Nora?  I  want  to!" 

Mrs.  Cartwright  laid  her  cheek  against  the  girl's 
cheek. 

"My  dearest  dear,  you've  made  the  people  about 
you  happy  all  your  life.  If  you  don't  make  Roger 
into  a  kind  of  demigod  it  will  be  because  he's  a  fool; 
and  I  don't  think  he's  quite  that.  No,  he's  the 
finest  man  of  my  acquaintance,  save  Henry.  He 
won't  blow  his  own  trumpet  to  you,  so  I'll  just  blow 
it  for  him.  You  needn't  ever  be  afraid  to  trust 
yourself  to  Roger.  He'll  be  good  to  you,  always, 
and  true  and  tender.  And  he'll  be  wise — up  to  his 
lights  (which  are  middling  bright).  There  were 
never  two  people  with  a  better  chance  for  happiness 
than  you  two.  And  I'm  so  glad,  I'm  so  glad  you've 
found  each  other." 

She  wanted  to  take  her  prospective  relation  off 
to  lunch,  but  Hope  said  she  must  lunch  in  Fortieth 

[255] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

Street  with  Aunt  Alice  King.  There  was  a  trying 
scene  to  be  gone  through  with  there,  she  well  knew, 
and  she  wanted  to  get  it  over. 

It  was  trying  and  sad,  too,  for  poor  Miss  King, 
taken  off  her  guard,  wept  and  was  pathetic  and  re 
proachful  by  turn.  It  was  a  severe  blow  to  her,  as 
the  girl  knew,  for  she  had  gone  on  hoping  against 
hope,  even  in  the  face  of  Emily  Brooks's  warning 
and  the  testimony  of  her  own  eyes.  She  jumped  at 
once  to  the  conclusion  that  her  goddaughter  had 
taken  this  step  in  a  moment  of  discouragement  or 
pique  over  the  failure  of  her  speech,  and  it  required 
a  great  deal  of  argument  to  convince  her  that  it 
wasn't  so. 

At  the  last  she  seemed  to  feel  a  slight  twinge  of 
shame  and  apologized,  wiping  her  eyes. 

"I  don't  want  to  seem  an  embittered  old  scold. 
I  suppose  I  am,  though.  But  it  did  mean  a  good 
deal  to  me.  And  it's  rather  sudden,  this  about-face 
of  yours.  Don't  mind  me,  child!  You  go  and  be 
happy.  I  know  your  young  man  in  a  sort  of  way. 
I  knew  his  father  and  mother.  It's  good  stock,  and 
he  has  a  good  face.  He'll  be  kind  to  you.  .  .  .  And 
now  I  think  you'd  better  run  away  before  I  depress 
you  too  much  with  my  weeping  and  wailing.  Leave 
me  to  sulk  alone  for  a  bit!" 

Hope  kissed  her  and  went,  and  was  sad  all  the 
way  up  Fifth  Avenue.  She  had  dealt  a  blow  to  a 
fond  and  loving  heart,  and  that  was  a  terrible  thing 
to  do,  but  the  blow  would  have  had,  in  any  case, 

1256] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

to  come  one  day  soon,  for,  Roger  or  no  Roger,  she 
couldn't  have  gone  on  in  the  path  Miss  King  had 
pointed  her  to.  She  knew  that  beyond  the  slightest 
doubt  or  mistake. 

She  reached  home  soon  after  three  and  borrowed 
a  tea  gown  from  Caroline  Darnley,  because  she  said 
she  couldn't  be  in  black  to-day,  not  for  Roger's 
hour.  The  tea  gown  was  much  too  old  for  her,  and 
made  her  look  like  a  fancy  dress  party,  for  most 
of  it  was  a  brocade  of  metallic  gold  threads  that 
shimmered  wickedly  in  the  light.  And  over  it  her 
hair  was  like  a  red  flame,  and  her  eyes  were  as  yel 
low  as  a  tiger's.  But  the  thing  was  extraordinarily 
becoming,  and  she  made  in  it  an  unforgettable 
picture — a  kind  of  golden  enchantment — something 
incredibly  beautiful  and  gorgeous  flashing  through 
a  dream. 

She  was  in  the  drawing-room  when  Roger  arrived, 
for  she  wanted  to  find  out  if  the  sight  of  him  entering 
would  give  her  the  thrill  she  felt  at  the  memory 
of  him  from  the  evening  past.  It  did.  It  thrilled 
her  from  head  to  foot  and  set  her  trembling. 

When  he  caught  sight  of  her  in  her  golden  dress 
he  stopped  short  with  a  little  cry.  And  she  went 
slowly  across  the  floor  into  her  lover's  arms. 


CHAPTER  XX 

I  AM  informed  by  a  number  of  married  ladies, 
young  and  old  (but  chiefly  young),  that  their 
bethrothal  periods  were  periods  of  some  stress  and 
strain,  of  heart-searching  and  not  infrequent  qualms, 
of  the  enforced  curtailment  of  liberties,  of  adjust 
ment  to  new  prospective  conditions — in  short,  the 
devil  of  a  time.  In  consequence  I  suppose  this  his 
tory,  since  it  purports  to  be  the  life  chronicle  of 
something  like  an  average  (though  unusually  beau 
tiful)  girl  of  the  well-to-do  class,  should,  just  here, 
plunge  Miss  Hope  Standish  into  restless  and  troubled 
seas.  But  it  will  do  nothing  of  the  sort,  for  it  is, 
above  all,  a  truthful  history,  and  there  were  no  such 
seas  for  her.  The  time,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  was  a 
time  of  blissful  and  unimagined  delights — a  long 
spell  of  white  enchantment.  She  was  so  happy  that 
to  go  on  at  any  length  about  it  would  be  both  sugary 
and  dull  (since  it  was  an  uneventful  happiness) ;  so 
we  shall  take  it,  as  it  were,  in  our  stride. 

I  confess,  though,  to  being  a  little  troubled  over 
all  that  useless  testimony  from  the  married  ladies, 
young  and  old.  Useless,  I  mean,  since  it  seems  to 
be  so  completely  at  variance  with  Hope's  experience. 

[258] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

One  wonders  just  why  it  is  at  variance — why  she 
should  have  had  such  an  exceptional  time  of  it.  (In 
a  whisper,  I  don't  believe  it  to  have  been  exceptional 
at  all.  I  believe  I  listened  to  the  wrong  ladies — 
ladies  who  weren't  very  much  hi  love.)  Perhaps  she 
plunged  with  such  unpremeditated  abruptness  into 
her  engagement  that  it  always  remained  new  and 
wonderful  to  her.  Perhaps  she  had  endured  so 
hard  and  puzzling  a  time  just  previous  that  any 
change  would  have  seemed  sweet.  I  don't  know. 
Anyhow,  she  lived  through  that  spring  in  a  dream 
of  rapture.  And  there  it  is. 

He  was  the  perfect  lover.  He  had  both  passion 
and  poetry  to  offer  her,  and  he  was  tremendously 
in  love.  These  days  were  enchanted  days  for  him, 
too.  He  was  accounted  among  his  friends  a  rather 
silent  young  man,  but  in  the  warmth  of  this  new  glow 
he  developed  a  descriptive  and  imaginative  tongue 
that  would  have  astonished  them. 

"Roger,  my  good  man,  where  did  you  learn  all 
this?"  Hope  asked  him  once.  "It  sounds  to  me 
like  experience.  That  little  cat  of  a  Dolly  Pierson 
tried  to  hint  to  me  the  other  day  that  you  had  sat 
rather  a  long  time  on  Mrs.  Harold  Benson's  hearth 
rug.  I  said  'Oh!'  and  laughed.  But  I  wanted  to 
slap  her.  Well,  if  you've  anything  to  confess  about 
Mrs.  Harold  Benson  you'd  better  get  it  over  with 
now.  She  is  pretty,  I  suppose?" 

Roger  was  annoyed,  and  called  Dolly  Pierson  this 
and  that.  There  had  really  been  nothing  at  all  in 

[259] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

his  two  years'  old  friendship  with  the  flirtatious 
lady,  and  he  told  Hope  so. 

"  Of  course,  you  won't  believe  me.  No  man  is  ever 
believed  about  such  things.  But  ask  Caroline  or 
George.  Ask  my  sister!  Ask  anybody!  They  saw 
all  there  was  to  see.  I'd  just  like  to  have  five 
minutes'  conversation  with  that  young  Pierson 
scandal-manufacturer  !'* 

He  was  so  indignant  and  straightforward  and  out 
raged  about  it  that  she  believed  him  on  the  spot 
and  never  asked  any  one  at  all.  Indeed,  she  hadn't 
doubted  him  seriously.  He  was  not  in  the  least  the 
tame-cat  sort  of  young  man,  and  any  other  rela 
tionship —  any  serious  passion,  that  is  —  with  Mrs. 
Harold  Benson  was  unthinkable.  She  was  a  woman 
like  a  vain  kitten. 

Hope  used  to  have  long  telephone  conversations 
with  her  lover  in  the  morning  before  she  got  up  (and 
at  other  incalculable  hours  as  well).  It  seriously 
deranged  Caroline  Darnley's  life,  as  that  lady  made 
pretty  generous  use  of  the  telephone  herself.  George 
heard  her  scolding  the  girl  about  it  in  burlesque  one 
day,  and  secretly  had  another  wire  laid  to  the  house 
for  Hope's  exclusive  benefit.  He  got  her,  from 
Heaven  knows  where,  a  gold-plated  instrument,  and, 
as  he  liked  to  play  little  jokes,  had  a  small  framed 
photograph  of  Roger  Bacon  fastened  to  the  thing 
by  a  little  arm,  so  that  as  she  listened  or  spoke  she 
had  his  face  always  before  her.  She  was  enchanted 
with  the  gift  and  hi  return  bought  George  D.  a  dog 

[260] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

he  had  been  admiring.  The  dog  bit  Caroline  one 
day,  and  so  poetic  justice  was  accomplished. 

The  wedding-day  was  set  for  the  last  week  in 
April.  Hope  would  rather  have  liked  it  to  be  in 
June,  for  she  had  the  vague  traditional  feeling  that 
June  was  the  month  of  brides;  but  when  Roger 
pointed  out  how  heavenly  it  would  be  to  spend 
May  on  the  lake  of  Como,  she  gave  way  at  once — 
as  doubtless  she  would  have  done,  anyhow,  for  it 
was  not  in  her  to  oppose  or  deny  him. 

In  March  she  went  to  New  Haven  for  a  fortnight 
that  prolonged  itself  hi  to  three  weeks.  She  had  let 
the  house  there  for  a  year  to  the  Hitchcocks,  whose 
own  home  had  been  destroyed  by  fire,  and  who  were 
building  another.  They  had  begged  her  all  winter 
to  make  them  a  visit,  offering  her  her  own  room  as 
an  inducement;  but  it  hadn't  been  convenient  for 
her  to  leave  New  York.  She  went  now,  driven  by 
a  kind  of  obscure  instinct — a  running-away  instinct. 
She  wanted  to  be  alone — in  the  sense  of  apart  from 
habitual  surroundings.  She  wanted  to  rest  and  to 
think,  and  to  look  at  her  life  from  a  little  way  off. 

"It's  more  or  less  the  kind  of  feeling  Roman 
Catholic  people  have  who  go  into  Retreat  now  and 
then,"  she  tried  to  explain  to  Roger.  "They  go,  I 
imagine,  to  examine  their  souls  and  to — well,  set 
their  houses  in  order.  That's  what  I  want  to  do. 
You  may  come  up  for  Sundays  if  you  like.  Yes, 
do!  I  shouldn't  be  able  to  stay  there  if  you  didn't. 
I  should  be  running  back  to  New  York  after  you. 

[261] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

But  I  really  must  be  quiet  for  a  time.  ...  I  think 
I  want  to  get  away  from  Aunt  Alice,  too.  She's  a 
kind  of  living  reproach  to  me.  She  doesn't  realize 
it,  but  she  visibly  mourns  over  me  every  time  I 
see  her.  It's  just  as  if  I'd  gone  to  the  bad — the 
bow-wows.  I  can't  bear  it." 

So  she  went  away  and  once  more  took  up  her 
being  in  the  home  of  her  childhood,  which  seemed  to 
have  suffered  singularly  little  change  of  any  kind, 
whether  physical  or  of  spirit.  That  gray  and  austere 
shade,  her  mother,  no  longer  sewed  or  played 
Victorian  melodies  in  the  back  drawing-room;  but 
Mrs.  Hitchcock  sat  there  in  the  mornings,  and  she 
was  not  so  very  different  in  type,  though  consider 
ably  less  aloof  from  the  world. 

Cornelia  was  passing  through  a  phase  of  higher 
biblical  criticism  and  scorn  of  the  male  sex,  so  there 
was  a  comforting  absence  of  undergraduates  in  the 
place,  but  she  was  much  excited  over  Hope's  engage 
ment.  She  remembered  the  rowing  young  man 
who  collected  pewter,  and  found  it  very  thrilling 
indeed  that  this  early  romance  should  have  sprung 
into  new  life  after  so  long  a  time. 

The  two  girls,  and  Miss  Goffe  as  well,  were  to 
gether  a  great  deal;  but  Hope  nevertheless  spent 
many  hours  alone,  when  Cornelia  Hitchcock  read  her 
higher  criticism  and  Miss  Goffe  quarreled  pleasantly 
with  the  young  assistant  professor  hi  Sheff,  whom 
she  thought  she  might  decide  to  marry  later  on. 
And  these  hours  and  the  long  solitary  walks  she 

[262] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

took  were  good  for  Hope.  They  "pulled  her  up," 
as  the  phrase  goes.  They  gave  her  breathing  space. 
They  clarified  her  mind.  They  slowed  her  heart 
beats  down  to  something  more  like  the  normal. 
For  she  had  been,  during  the  past  few  weeks,  in  a 
state  of  intoxication,  seeing  no  farther  than  her 
lover's  eyes. 

It  had  been  all  so  new  and  fascinating,  this  hand- 
in-hand  exploration  of  the  enchanted  isle.  She 
had  had  so  little  experience  of  the  domains  of  love. 
For  the  Traill  affair  had  been  more  an  aberration 
than  an  experience,  and  there  were  no  others.  She 
came  unprepared  to  the  golden  shore,  thrilling  and 
crying  out  at  each  new  splendid  marvel.  To  be 
sure,  she  had  read  a  great  many  works  of  fiction 
which  dealt  pretty  exclusively  with  the  tender  emo 
tions;  but  even  these,  describing  as  they  did,  per 
force,  only  external  manifestations,  had  quite  failed 
to  prepare  her  for  that  magic  light  whose  glow  trans 
formed  every  familiar  thing  it  fell  upon,  and  made 
it  new  and  strange  and  wonderful.  They  had  told 
her  that  Gwendolyn  trembled  with  rapture  as  Lord 
Ronald  pressed  her  white  hand  to  his  lips,  but  they 
had  given  her  no  idea  of  what  trembling  with  rapture 
feels  like,  because  words  cannot  do  that. 

And  this  "Retreat"  of  hers,  as  she  called  it, 
turned  out  a  good  thing  for  Roger  as  well  as  for  her. 
It  permitted  her  to  see  him  from  a  distance,  and  more 
as  he  really  was.  He  had  been  to  her  a  fiery,  glowing, 
exciting  presence,  the  center  of  all  her  thought  and 

[263] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

emotion,  .too  close  for  his  qualities  as  a  man  to  dis 
tinguish  themselves.  Now,  from  seventy-five  miles 
away,  she  saw  that  he  was  more  than  the  perfect 
lover — and  in  some  ways  perhaps  less.  She  saw  the 
fine  things  about  him,  the  sturdy,  quiet,  honest 
strength  (that  in  days  to  come  would  make  such  an 
excellent  balance  wheel  to  her  less  regulated  nature — 
keep  her  from  any  amount  of  impulsive  folly),  and 
his  weaknesses,  too:  for  he  had  the  defects  of  his 
qualities.  He  was  a  little  too  sure  of  himself,  a 
little  stubborn,  rather  serious  about  his  convictions, 
and  not  very  open  to  reason  where  his  prejudices 
were  concerned.  But  she  loved  them  all,  all  the 
qualities  both  good  and  bad.  The  good  ones  seemed 
tremendous  to  her,  and  the  bad  ones  she  smiled 
over:  they  were  so  few  and  so  little,  she  was  quite 
sure  she  could  laugh  them  out  of  existence  in  a 
month's  time. 

He  came  to  New  Haven  three  times  while  she  was 
there,  and  she  had  him  to  herself  for  a  few  precious 
hours.  He  was  the  perfect  lover  still.  He  pleaded 
with  her  to  return  to  New  York — which  was  just 
what  she  had  wanted  him  to  do.  He  told  her  how 
empty  his  life  was,  bereft  of  her,  and  she  was  en 
chanted,  and  all  but  gave  way  to  him,  but  not 
quite.  He  brought  her  little  presents,  in  addition 
to  the  roses  that  came  each  morning  to  her  bedside 
and  overflowed  across  the  house  until  it  looked  like 
a  horticultural  exhibition.  She  kept  his  presents 
about  her  all  the  day,  and  at  night  they  lay  under  her 

[264] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

pillow,  where  she  could  slip  her  hand  now  and  then 
and  touch  them. 

They  never  mentioned  The  Cause  save  once, 
and  then  indirectly.  He  seemed  one  day  vaguely 
troubled  by  self-searching,  and  spoke  as  if  he  were 
thinking  aloud. 

"You've  given  up  a  great  deal  for  me,  you  know. 
I've  said  nothing  about  it.  I  couldn't,  somehow. 
But  don't  think  I  didn't  realize  it.  I  did  and  I  do. 
I  couldn't  have  taken  your  sacrifice  unless  I'd  been 
pretty  sure  ...  I  mean.  .  .  .  Well,  it  was  half  killing 
you.  I  couldn't  bear  that.  And  you  know  I've 
never  believed  .  .  .  " 

She  stopped  him  with  her  hand  across  his  lips. 
"I  know,  Roger  dear.  Don't  say  any  more.  I 
wasn't  up  to  it.  We're  both  sure  of  that.  And 
we're  both  happy.  Let's  not  talk  about  unhap- 
piness!" 

It  seems  a  little  odd  that  they  should  have  found 
themselves  so  embarrassed  by  the  subject.  Per 
haps  it  was  because  they  realized  how  long  this 
thing  had  stood  between  them.  And  perhaps  they 
were  a  little  afraid  of  it.  No  one  can  say.  Anyhow, 
that  was  all  that  was  said.  They  dropped  it  there, 
with  a  furtive  relief,  and  hastened  to  speak  of 
something  else.  » 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  wedding  took  place,  as  had  been  arranged, 
at  mid-April,  and  by  Hope's  wish  not  in  New 
York,  but  in  New  Haven.  There  was  no  grandeur 
or  spectacle  about  it,  for  she  was  still  within  her 
year  of  mourning,  though  near  the  end.  George 
and  Caroline  Darnley  came  from  the  city,  and  the 
Cartwrights  and  Major  Harding  and  Miss  Alice 
King,  and  little  Mrs.  Brooks,  too.  Also,  there  were 
a  half  dozen  of  Hope's  New  Haven  intimates,  and 
that  was  all  the  company  that  gathered  that  day 
at  old  Trinity  on  the  Green. 

It  was  a  sunny  day,  with  soft  air  that  smelt  of 
spring.  The  tulip  beds  in  the  front  gardens  were 
in  flower,  and  the  tulip  trees,  too;  and  there  were 
borders  of  yellow  daffodils  under  the  south  windows 
of  the  houses  in  Hillhouse  Avenue.  The  lilacs  were 
budding,  and  the  grass  on  the  Green  was  fresh  and 
bright  and  verdant.  Everywhere  there  was  the 
rich  promise  of  summer.  It  was  a  good  day  to  be 
married  on  if  you  were  fancifully  inclined.  It 
boded  well. 

Hope  slept  fitfully  the  night  before,  and  had  a 
succession  of  dreams,  though  they  were  quite  unre- 

[266] 


THE    OPENING   DOOR 

lated  to  current  events  or  to  one  another — simple 
manifestations  of  a  state  of  nervousness.  But  she 
awoke  from  the  last  of  these  to  find  the  sun  slanting 
in  across  her  floor  in  two  great  shafts  of  pale  gold. 
She  lay  tranquil  for  a  few  moments,  still  half  within 
her  dream,  then  all  at  once  realized  what  this  day 
was  to  bring  forth,  and  had  what  is  called  in  France 
a  serrement  de  cosur  that  was  almost  like  a  stab  of 
pain.  For  just  an  instant  she  was  shaken  by  fear — 
a  devastating  dread  of  the  unknown.  For  just  an 
instant  she  saw  Roger's  face  through  a  kind  of  red 
mist  that  distorted  it  into  the  face  of  a  fierce  and 
terrible  stranger. 

Then  the  instant  passed,  and  she  laughed  to  her 
self  and  rang  for  her  maid. 

But  she  wept  a  little  when  she  was  being  dressed 
to  go  to  the  church — they  all  did,  all  the  kind  and 
loving  women  who  surrounded  her — Caroline  Darn- 
ley  and  Aunt  Alice,  Nora  Cartwright,  Ethel  Goffe, 
the  Hitchcocks,  mother  and  daughter,  and  little  Em 
ily  Brooks. 

Women  usually  weep  at  such  times,  one  is  told; 
and,  indeed,  there  were  tears  inherent  in  the  situa 
tion.  It  is  better  to  be  a  woman  than  a  girl.  There 
is  neither  virtue  nor  worth  in  mere  immaturity,  in 
completeness,  promise  without  fulfilment.  But  the 
step  onward  from  girlhood  is  a  grave  matter.  Play 
time  is  over:  there  are  realities  and  responsibilities 
to  face  now.  It  deserves  at  least  the  tribute  of  a 
gentle  tear  or  two. 

18  [  267  ] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

She  was  white  and  rather  miserable  when  she  met 
her  lover  at  the  chancel  steps,  for  she  hated  being 
the  center  of  even  this  small  publicity  and  cere- 
moniousness;  it  made  her  quite  fidgety  and 
wretched.  But  Roger  gave  her  a  friendly,  amused 
grin,  and  she  heard  George  D.  (who  hated  cere 
monies  too,  but  was  to  "give  her  away")  saying  to 
himself  in  a  resentful  growl: 

"Now  then.  Dammit!  Which  side  of  her  do  I 
stand  on?" 

And  she  began  to  giggle,  and  got  through  with  it 
all  quite  calmly.  She  almost  enjoyed  it. 

There  was  a  breakfast  in  Hillhouse  Avenue,  and 
soon  afterward  the  Bacons  left  for  New  York,  where 
they  were  to  embark  that  same  evening  on  the 
ship  which  was  to  sail  at  daybreak  for  Italy. 

They  had,  after  the  first  two  or  three  days,  a 
favorable  voyage,  with  a  sunny  sky  and  smooth 
seas  and  no  wind  to  speak  of.  They  landed,  for  a 
half  day,  at  Ponta  Delgada  in  the  Azores,  and  later 
at  Madeira,  where  Hope  was  enchanted  with  sliding 
down  the  mountain  on  a  sledge,  and  insisted  upon 
doing  it  twice  over,  and  wanted  to  go  there  to  live. 
So  at  the  end  of  a  lazy  fortnight  they  came,  by 
Genoa  and  Milan,  to  the  garden  of  the  world,  and 
installed  themselves  in  a  villa  high  up  on  the  hillside 
over  Tremezzo  and  Caddenabbia,  facing  the  point  of 
Bellagio. 

Hope  had  never  before  been  on  the  lake  of  Como. 
The  perfect  and  peculiar  beauty  of  the  place  was 

[268] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

new  to  her — ravishing  beyond  any  words.  Some 
austere  souls  are  cloyed  by  it.  They  are  impatient 
that  the  eye  should  behold  at  once  looming  moun 
tains,  a  sapphire  lake,  little  white  villages  buried  in 
green,  yellow  sunlight  on  plastered  villa  walls,  gar 
dens  ablaze  with  bright  flowers,  and  stone  stairs 
leading  down  from  them  to  the  water's  edge.  It 
seems  to  them  too  calculated,  too  much  a  decor  de 
theatre,  too  like  a  comic  opera.  It  too  closely  re 
sembles  a  certain  genre  of  mid- Victorian  painting 
which,  together  with  what-nots  and  antimacassars, 
they  are  trying  to  forget.  One  fancies  them  saying, 
a  little  irritably: 

"If  we  are  to  have  mountain  scenery,  let  us  have 
mountain  scenery  by  all  means — noble  and  rugged 
and  severe!  Let  us  not  complicate  and  cheapen  it 
by  water  of  an  improbable  blue,  and  by  tropical 
vegetation,  pink,  lemon,  and  white  stucco,  and  his 
trionic  boatmen.  This  excess  of  color  is  blinding; 
it  is  chromolithographic;  it  is  like  a  picture  postal 
card.  Come  away!  Our  Taste  is  offended." 

But  Hope,  by  great  good  luck,  was  vulgarly  igno 
rant  of  all  this  purity.  The  warm  loveliness  of  Como 
seemed  to  her  like  the  beauty  of  fairy  tales  come 
true.  It  was  as  if  all  the  nicest  parts  of  all  the 
stories  in  the  world  were  being  combined  to  make  one 
magnificent  and  unparalleled  romance,  with  Roger 
and  herself  for  characters,  and  the  lake  of  Como  for 
background. 

She  looked  back  with  a  kind  of  amused  wonder 

[269] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

over  the  early  days  of  their  engagement.  She  had 
thought  happiness  reached  its  height  in  that  delight 
ful  period.  But  it  made  her  laugh  now. 

There  are  some  young  women  upon  whose  natures 
even  a  happy  marriage  seems  to  work  very  little 
apparent  change.  The  change,  if  it  comes  at  all, 
comes  later  with  the  arrival  of  their  first  child. 
But  there  are  others  upon  whom  it  sheds  a  kind  of 
visible  glory.  It  is  like  the  swift  coming  of  summer, 
like  the  sudden  bursting  into  flower  of  an  azalea 
tree  in  tropical  latitudes.  It  seems  to  alter  every 
fiber  of  their  being.  They  glow,  as  it  were,  with 
light. 

Not  much  skill  in  the  reading  of  human  nature 
would  have  been  required  to  place  Hope  in  this 
second  class.  Her  husband,  though  he  wasn't  par 
ticularly  acute,  had  been  sure  of  her.  But  he  found, 
during  these  golden  honeymoon  days,  that  he  hadn't 
known  so  much  as  the  very  beginnings,  the  outskirts, 
of  her  nature.  He  found  undreamed-of  heights  and 
depths.  He  found  ardors  and  reserves,  franknesses 
and  mysteries  that  both  enslaved  and  baffled  him. 
She  was  an  exquisite  enigma. 

In  matters  of  love  she  had  the  open  frankness  of 
a  pagan  or  of  a  Latin  woman.  (A  curious  quality 
to  have  come  out  of  New  England.)  She  was  as 
unreserved  as  a  natural  child.  It  was  sufficiently 
in  keeping  with  her  character;  but  Roger  hadn't 
been  quite  prepared  for  it,  and,  despite  his  real 
fervor,  was  more  than  once  mildly  shocked,  for  he 

[270] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

himself,  like  most  Anglo-Saxon  men,  had  a  little 
strain  of  puritanism  in  him,  and  felt  it  to  be  almost 
wrong  to  let  yourself  go. 

And  that  was  sufficiently  in  keeping  with  his 
character,  for  he  was  much  less  impulsive  than  Hope. 
However,  he  got  bravely  over  his  small  scruple,  as 
almost  anybody  might  be  expected  to  do  under  such 
enchanting  circumstances,  and  that  was  a  very 
good  thing,  for  with  this  perfect  and  unreserved 
intimacy  to  hold  them  together  they  had  a  much 
better  chance  against  the  inevitable  discovery  young 
married  people  make  that  two  cannot  always  think 
or  feel  as  one. 

That  is  not  to  say  that  these  two  made  many 
such  discoveries,  for  they  didn't — or  if  little  differ 
ences  of  opinion  arose  they  adjusted  them  at  once, 
without  friction.  The  great  arithmetical  truth  that 
one  and  one  make  two,  and  that  two  cannot  be  made 
one,  they,  of  course,  had  to  face;  but  they  faced  it 
smiling,  clinging  so  close  that  two  looked  almost 
like  one,  anyhow;  and  they  made  love  to  each  other 
in  their  fairyland,  and  were  happy. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

THE  Bacons  had  meant  to  go  to  Venice  early  in 
June  and  stay  there  until  the  weather  got  too 
warm;  but  they  made  a  sudden  change  of  plan  and 
went  off  to  Vienna  instead. 

Hope,  one  day  during  their  last  week  on  the  lake, 
had  a  letter  from  Lady  Evelyn  Foster.  It  was  a 
long  letter,  and  she  read  it  through  twice  before 
taking  up  the  next  of  the  little  pile  she  had  in  her 
lap.  Roger,  who  had  got  through  with  his,  and 
was  sprawled  near  by  in  a  basket  chair,  asked: 

"No  bad  news,  what?  You  seem  precious  solemn 
all  at  once." 

She  looked  up  at  him  rather  thoughtfully. 

"No.  It's  a  letter  from  Evelyn  Foster.  It  seems 
I  wrote  to  her  from  New  York  that  we  meant  to 
go  to  Venice  in  June,  and — well,  she  and  her  father 
and  mother — the  Mallows — are  going  to  be  there." 

Roger  took  out  his  case  and  selected  a  cigarette 
with  what  seemed  like  unnecessary  care,  since  they 
were  all  Italian  cigarettes  and  quite  unfit  for  con 
sumption.  He  said:  "Yes.  Yes." 

And  Hope  continued  to  watch  him. 

"Of  course,  I  had  no  idea  of  our  encountering  them 

[272] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

either  in  Venice  or  anywhere  else.  I  said  we  were 
going  there  just  because — well,  to  make  conversa 
tion.  I  was  writing  a  rather  long  letter." 

He  made  no  comment  on  that,  and  after  a  moment 
she  said: 

"Would  you  rather  go  somewhere  else,  Roger?" 

"How  about  you?" 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders  with  a  little  laugh. 

"Well,  I  like  Evelyn  Foster,  as  you  know,  I  like 
her  very  much  indeed — and  the  Mallows,  too.  But 
this  is  a  honeymoon,  not  a  round  of  visits.  I'm 
sorry  about  Venice,  for  I  did  want  to  go  there.  We 
should  have  had  a  heavenly  time.  I  suppose  we 
might  try  it  for  a  few  days,  and,  if  it  got  too  com 
plicated,  run  away." 

Her  husband  said  "Yes,"  but  a  little  doubtfully; 
and  he  began  to  walk  up  and  down  the  gravel  before 
her,  for  they  were  in  their  garden,  puffing  at  his 
Italian  cigarette. 

"We  could  go  to  Vienna  instead,"  he  submitted, 
after  some  thought,  "and  down  the  Danube  on  a 
steamer,  and  round  to  Constantinople.  It  might  be 
tiring.  I  can't  say." 

Hope  couldn't  say  either,  and  didn't  try  to,  just 
then.  But  she  waited,  and  through  the  day 
watched  his  clouded  face  and  considered. 

If  she  could  have  been  sure  that  his  feeling  was 
just  annoyance  over  the  prospect  of  their  solitude 
a  deux  being  threatened!  If  she  could  have  asked 
him  straight  out: 

[273] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"Do  you  want  to  keep  me  away  from  Evelyn 
Foster  because  she's  a  Suffragette?"  Once  she  was 
on  the  point  of  putting  the  question  in  just  those 
words.  But  she  was  afraid,  and  shirked  it.  Sup 
pose  he  had  no  such  idea  and  she  should  give  it 
him! 

As  for  her,  she  found  herself  oddly  stirred.  The 
thought  of  this  exquisite  dream  of  happiness  suffer 
ing  incursion  of  any  nature  was  a  tragedy  in  itself. 
She  couldn't  bear  it.  And  yet  to  see  Evelyn  Foster 
.  .  .  just  for  a  day  or  two!  The  English  girl  had  es 
tablished  a  kind  of  hold  on  her  mind — and  heart 
as  well.  Just  one  or  two  long,  comfortable  talks, 
and  then  she  and  Roger  could  run  away  from 
Venice.  It  would  be  nice  to  hear  what  Lady 
Evelyn  had  been  doing  these  past  months.  It 
would  be  a  kind  of  comfort  to  hear  her  talk.  She 
was  so  wise  and  sure!  One  felt  in  her  a  length  and 
breadth  and  height  of  view  that  neither  Aunt  Alice 
nor  Emily  Brooks,  for  example,  seemed  to  possess. 
Perhaps  it  was  because  Lady  Evelyn  had  known  so 
many  more  kinds  of  people. 

On  the  other  hand,  she  was  by  no  means  sure  the 
meeting  would  be  a  good  thing.  When  one  has 
definitely  put  something  aside  it  is  better  to  let  it 
lie — like  sleeping  dogs.  Evelyn  Foster  might  stir 
her  all  up  again.  In  fact,  she  was  pretty  sure  to, 
whether  purposely  or  not. 

"I  think  perhaps  we'd  best  go  to  Vienna,  Roger." 
She  sought  him  out  that  afternoon  to  give  him  her 

[274] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

opinion.  And  Roger  looked,  all  at  once,  quite  ab 
surdly  relieved,  and  said  he'd  telegraph  for  tickets 
and  reservations  and  things. 

So  they  went  to  Vienna,  and  to  Budapest,  and, 
by  boat,  down  the  beautiful  river  to  Belgrad  and 
Bazias,  and  thence,  by  Black  Sea  steamer,  from 
Varna  to  Constantinople,  with  which  historic  capital 
Hope  was  enchanted  (though  less  because  of  its 
history  than  for  its  bazars).  She  went  to  every 
mosque,  and  on  Friday  to  the  Sweet  Waters,  and 
up  the  Bosphorus  to  the  blue  Symplegades,  which 
seemed  to  have  shifted  their  color  as  well  as  their 
positions.  Also  she  bought  three  rugs,  a  Ghiordes 
and  two  Kulahs,  and  any  quantity  of  Oriental 
jewelry,  which  could  never  by  any  possibility  be 
worn  except  at  a  fancy  dress  ball. 

They  would  have  stayed  by  the  Golden  Horn  for 
weeks  if  it  hadn't  been  for  her  suffering  over  the 
miseries  of  the  dogs,  which  presently  became  in 
tolerable.  She  was  forever  suffering  over  the 
miseries  of  something — a  little  crippled  newsboy, 
or  a  flogged  horse,  or  a  white-faced  beggar,  or  a 
girl  in  a  shop  who  looked  tired  and  ill,  and  would 
probably  be  unable  to  work  next  week,  and  lose  her 
job,  and  starve  to  death  or  take  to  the  streets.  It 
reduced  her  husband  almost  to  despair,  this  instant 
sympathy  of  hers.  But,  luckily,  she  wasn't  morbid 
about  it.  She  didn't  save  it  up  and  brood  over  it 
and  make  everybody  about  her  wretched.  She  did 
what  she  could  on  the  spot,  and  went  on.  But  the 

[27&] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

gaunt  and  mangy  and  crippled  dogs  of  Constanti 
nople  were  too  much  for  her,  as  they  have  been  for 
many  another.  They  began  to  haunt  her  thoughts, 
and  she  told  Roger,  and  the  two  fled. 

They  had  July  in  Switzerland;  but  early  in  August 
went  to  Deauville,  where  Roger,  as  a  surprise  to  his 
wife,  had  engaged  Villa  Belle  Marquise  for  a  month. 
She  was  touched  and  pleased  beyond  words. 

And  yet  it  was  here,  in  these  gay  and  reminiscent 
surroundings,  that  they  found  the  Sleeping  Dog — 
stretched  out,  as  it  were,  on  the  bench — and  fell 
over  him  and  made  him  growl. 

They  were  strolling  on  the  sands  at  Trouville 
during  the  bathing-hour,  and  passed  a  handsome 
gray-haired  Englishwoman  whose  face  was  vaguely 
familiar  to  Hope.  They  encountered  her  again 
presently,  and  at  the  same  instant  the  two  recog 
nized  each  other  and  spoke.  The  Englishwoman 
was  a  Miss  Warriner,  a  friend  and  fellow-worker  of 
Lady  Evelyn  Foster's,  and  Hope  had  met  and  liked 
her  in  London.  Miss  Warriner  seemed  much  pleased 
at  the  encounter,  for  she  remembered  the  beautiful 
young  American  girl  very  well,  and  had  often  heard 
Lady  Evelyn  speak  of  her.  Hope  introduced  her 
husband,  and  Miss  Warriner  discovered  that  it  was 
he  who  had  been  so  kind  to  her  brother,  the  well- 
known  "H.  W.,"  when  that  gentleman  had  gone  to 
America  to  play  polo. 

She  asked  them  to  lunch  with  her  at  the  Casino. 

"I've  so  much  to  say  to  you,  my  dear,  and  so 

[276] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

many  things  to  ask  about  that  wonderful  woman, 
your  aunt.  She  is  your  aunt?  Miss  King?  Oh, 
godmother!  Well,  it's  all  the  same." 

Roger  looked  a  little  solemn  at  this;  but  he  made 
no  objection  to  the  luncheon  plan,  and  was  very 
polite  and  attentive  to  Miss  Warriner  during  the 
meal.  He  had  liked  her  brother.  Indeed,  he 
couldn't  help  liking  her  also,  for  she  had  great  charm 
and  spirits,  and  talked  exceedingly  well.  He  hated 
and  feared  her  words,  for  the  conversation  soon 
turned  to  Equal  Suffrage;  but  he  couldn't  deny 
that  she  spoke  with  grace.  She  had  the  manner 
and  bearing  of  the  great  ladies  of  her  world,  and  she 
lent  dignity  to  that  undignified  subject.  There  was 
about  her  none  of  the  somewhat  professional  or 
businesslike  air  that  so  put  him  off  Miss  Alice  King, 
and  yet  she  was  speaking  of  that  Amazonian  leader 
in  terms  of  unbounded  admiration  and  respect.  It 
was  all  very  painful.  These  women,  even  the  best 
of  them,  had  no  sense  of  values. 

Miss  Warriner  asked  Hope  when  she  expected  to 
return  to  her  own  country,  and  Hope  said  in  Oc 
tober. 

"Ah,  yes!  In  time  for  the  winter's  campaign. 
How  good  do  you  think  the  chances  are  in  your 
state  this  year?  If  only  you  could  get  an  eastern 
state!  And  New  York  best  of  all!  I'm  told  Cali 
fornia  and  Wisconsin  look  very  bright." 

Hope  glanced  up  at  Roger  and  down  again. 

"Oh,  I  don't  really  know.    You  see,  I've  been  out 

[277] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

of  touch  for  some  time.  And  my  husband  doesn't 
think  very  well  of  Equal  Suffrage." 

Miss  Warriner  looked  at  him. 

"Indeed!  Well,  our  own  men  are  often  the  hard 
est  to  convince.  My  brother  is  quite  ferociously 
opposed  to  the  whole  movement.  But  then  my 
brother,  though  he's  one  of  the  best  fellows  in  the 
world,  hasn't  an  open  mind.  His  opinions  were 
made  for  him  at  Eton  and  Balliol." 

Roger  laughed,  though  with  a  slight  constraint. 

"Aren't  you  perhaps  a  little  hard  on  Warriner? 
Perhaps  his  mind  closed  after,  not  before,  considera 
tion  of  the  subject." 

"I've  talked  to  him,"  Warriner's  sister  said,  "and 
so  have  you,  I  take  it.  His  form  of  argument 
is  that  'decent  fellas  don't  go  in  for  muck  like 
that.'" 

And  Roger  had  to  laugh  again,  for,  excellent  and 
generous  sportsman  though  he  was,  the  phrase 
quoted  did  sound  rather  like  the  man. 

But  Hope  was  uncomfortable,  and  insisted  upon 
telling  Miss  Warriner  how  long  and  how  hard  she 
had  tried  to  work  for  The  Cause  in  New  York,  and 
how  unfitted  for  it  she  had  found  herself.  She  felt 
an  inexplicable  necessity  for  setting  herself,  and 
Roger  too,  right  before  this  gracious  lady  who  had 
served  a  term  in  prison  for  her  convictions.  And 
the  Englishwoman  watched  her  troubled  face  and 
nodded  kindly. 

"I    know.    You    haven't    the — the    thick    skin. 

[278] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

You  haven't  the  knack  of  dealing  with  strangers  in 
bulk.  Heaps  of  us  haven't.  It's  just  a  matter  of 
finding  our  proper  place.  There  are  so  many,  many 
ways  of  being  useful.  Idleness,  in  the  face  of  all  the 
wrong  and  suffering  there  is  in  the  world,  has  come 
to  seem  a  kind  of  disgrace,  hasn't  it?" 

She  seemed  about  to  go  on.  She  had  the  air  of 
only  beginning  what  she  wished  to  say,  but  she 
looked  from  one  to  the  other  of  those  young  faces; 
and  it  may  be  that  she  felt  the  atmosphere  of  dread 
and  hostility  and  strain,  for  presently  she  shook 
her  head  and  asked  how  they  liked  the  Danube, 
as  she  thought  of  going  there  next  year  on  her 
holiday. 

They  begged  her  to  dine  that  evening  at  Villa 
Belle  Marquise.  They  could  hardly  avoid  it;  and 
Roger  thought  it  could  in  any  case  do  no  harm, 
for  there  were  to  be  half  a  dozen  others  present. 
But  she  was  engaged,  and^  on  the  morrow  was  to 
leave  Trouville  for  the  Engadine.  So  they  bade  her 
good-by,  Hope  sending  any  quantity  of  affectionate 
messages  to  Evelyn  Foster,  and  they  found  their 
motor  in  the  street  behind  the  Casino  and  went 
home. 

It  would  have  been  well  if  they  could  have  had  the 
whole  matter  out  at  just  this  time — talked  it  over 
frankly.  But  they  were  shy.  Each  left  it  to  the 
other  to  begin,  and  so  it  wasn't  begun  at  all,  but  lay 
there  between  them — a  thing  recognized  and  feared, 
but  not  spoken  of. 

[279] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

And  Hope  was  haunted  by  the  Englishwoman's 
words. 

"Idleness,  in  the  face  of  all  the  wrong  and  suffer 
ing  there  is  in  the  world,  has  come  to  seem  a  kind  of 
disgrace,  hasn't  it?" 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

FOR  the  first  winter  in  New  York  they  took  a 
house  in  Sixty-ninth  Street  belonging  to  the 
Stewart-Hills,  who  meant  to  spend  the  year  abroad. 
Hope  had  never  seen  the  place,  but  Roger  had,  and 
Aunt  Caroline,  who  went  through  it  from  top  to 
bottom  with  the  agent  and  caretaker,  wrote  that  in 
her  opinion  they  couldn't  do  better.  She  even  en 
gaged  servants  for  them,  as  she  returned  to  New 
York  from  Scotland  a  fortnight  before  their  arrival; 
and  so  they  installed  themselves  with  as  little  friction 
and  inconvenience  as  if  they  had  lived  there  for  years. 
Hope  found  it  great  fun  to  begin  housekeeping, 
even  though  housekeeping  consisted  of  nothing  more 
onerous  than  approving  the  menus  for  the  day  and 
making  out  lists  of  dinner  guests.  She  felt  very 
grown  up  and  matronly  over  these  activities,  and 
over  the  quite  unnecessary  inspection  of  the  linen 
presses  and  the  rearrangement  of  the  furniture  in 
certain  of  the  rooms.  It  kept  her  pleasantly  occu 
pied  for  two  or  three  weeks,  and  for  two  or  three 
weeks  longer  she  was  able  to  keep  up  some  pretense 
of  occupation.  Then  she  went  to  Caroline  Darnley 
and  asked: 

[281] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"What  do  you  do  to  fill  up  your  time?" 

Her  cousin  was  mildly  astonished,  for  she  had 
always  thought  of  herself  as  a  very  busy  woman. 

"Dear  me!  What  don't  I  do?  I'm  rushed  from 
morning  to  night.  There  are  always  heaps  of  things 
I  never  find  time  for.  Heaps  of  them!  Just  you 
wait  until  the  season  is  under  way,  and  you  won't 
have  to  ask  that  question  again.  You  get  up  at  ten, 
and  there's  your  masseuse  and  your  cook  and  your 
butler  and  your  housekeeper.  And  then  trades 
people — dressmakers  and  hats  and  all  that.  And  a 
half  hour  with  your  secretary — more  if  you've  letters 
to  write.  And  telephoning  and  people  running  in, 
and,  very  likely,  a  committee  meeting  somewhere  or 
other.  It's  luncheon  before  you've  had  a  chance  to 
get  your  breath.  In  the  afternoon,  of  course,  you've 
got  to  drive;  you  can't  do  without  air,  can  you? 
And  there  are  pictures  to  see  and  cards  to  leave, 
and  you  rush  like  anything  to  get  back  by  five. 
Then  calls,  if  you  go  in  for  being  at  home,  and  a  half 
hour  of  rest  before  you  dress  for  dinner.  That's  the 
least — the  minimum.  You'll  find  a  thousand  other 
things  turning  up — lectures,  and  Bagbys,  and  re 
hearsals  at  the  opera,  and  lessons  in  this  or  that — 
Oh,  any  quantity  of  things!  Good  heavens,  I 
should  think  so!" 

Hope  was  overwhelmed  by  this  array  of  activities, 
and  called  in  Nora  Cartwright  for  consultation. 
Mrs.  Cartwright  laughed. 

"Well,  yes,  I  suppose  that's  one  way  of  getting 

[282] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

through  life,  and  a  very  easy  way  to  drop  into,  too. 
But  I  can't  see  you  satisfying  yourself  with  it." 

"No  more  can  I,"  Hope  said.  "Of  course,  I  do 
want  to  play  about  and  have  a  good  time.  I  won't 
deny  that.  I  love  having  a  good  time.  But  I  must 
do  something  as  well.  I  should  go  mad  if  I  led  the 
kind  of  existence  Caroline  does.  You  see — " 

She  found  it  a  little  difficult  to  be  frank  with 
Roger's  sister  just  because  she  was  his  sister. 

"I  got  seriously — very  seriously  interested  in 
something  last  year.  And  I'm  afraid  that  has  spoilt 
me  for  being  idle  or  just  amusing  myself.  I  should 
feel  such  a  wretched  traitor.  I  think  I'm  going  to 
feel  that,  anyhow;  but  it  won't  be  so  bad  if  I've 
work  to  do.  I've  got  to  be  interested  in  some 
thing." 

Mrs.  Cartwright  said:  "I  know!  I  know!"  and 
looked  at  her  with  compassionate  eyes,  for  she  saw 
that  there  was  an  old  wound  here,  a  serious  one, 
and  that  it  had  never  healed.  She  said:  "Of  course, 
one  can  always  go  in  for  a  course  of  reading,  or  one 
can  systematically  study  something." 

Hope  looked  a  little  doubtful. 

"Yes,  to  be  sure.     Only — that's  just  for  oneself." 

And  Mrs.  Cartwright  nodded. 

"I  know.  When  you've  seriously  tried  to  take 
a  hand  in  what  the  world  is  doing  to  right  itself,  a 
course  of  eighteenth-century  French  literature  doesn't 
seem  much  of  a  substitute.  I  can  see  that.  .  .  . 

You've  definitely  given  up  Suffrage,  then?" 
19  [ 283  ] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Hope  said,  "I'm  afraid  so,"  and  looked  away. 

But  Mrs.  Cartwright  pressed  her. 

"Don't  think  I'm  a  prying  old  woman!  I  hate 
to  pry.  But  I  should  so  like  to  help  if  I  could! 
And  we're  good  friends,  you  and  I.  Is  it — because 
you  found  yourself  unfitted  for  the  work,  or  is  it 
Roger?  Of  course,  I  know  he  disapproves  hi  a  gen 
eral  way,  but  surely  if  you  felt  you  must  go  back 
to  it—" 

Hope  shook  her  head  in  a  kind  of  sudden  angry 
distress. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know!  I  suppose  it's  both.  Cer 
tainly  I  was  a  ghastly  failure  at  the  only  two  kinds 
of  Suffrage  work  that  seem  to  be  of  much  use.  I 
should  never  learn  to  be  any  good  at  canvassing  or 
speaking.  And  I'm  rather  vague  as  to  what  else 
I  could  do  if  I  felt  myself  free  to  go  back.  Un 
luckily,  I'm  not  free.  Oh,  I  made  Roger  no  prom 
ises — in  words — but  there  was  a  kind  of  silent 
understanding — at  least,  he  thinks  so,  I'm  quite 
sure.  You  see,  he's  very  down  on  the  whole  move 
ment.  It  harrows  up  all  his  instincts,  and  if  I  should 
go  back  to  it  there'd  be  an  intolerable  strain." 

She  looked  up  at  her  friend  with  a  sudden  curi 
osity. 

"You're  against  it,  too,  aren't  you?  I  seem  to 
have  felt  that  without  ever  having  heard  you  say 
anything." 

Mrs.  Cartwright  colored  and  gave  a  little  em 
barrassed  laugh. 

[284] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

"Well — my  dear,  don't  think  too  hardly  of  me. 
If  I'm  against  it  I'm  quite  stupidly  against  it.  You 
could  bowl  me  over  in  three  minutes  if  you  should 
start  in  to  argue.  I  think  I'm  like  Roger.  And,  after 
all,  we've  the  same  blood,  haven't  we?  It  harrows 
up  my  instincts,  too.  That's  just  the  word,  by  the 
way.  You  couldn't  have  found  a  better.  ~  Our 
opposition  is  purely  instinctive.  We  have  the  old- 
fashioned  Victorian  ideal  of  womanhood.  .  .  .  Oh  yes ! 
I  know  just  what  you're  going  to  say:  the  millions 
of  women  who  work,  who  haven't  homes,  who  can't 
be  pretty  and  charming  and  inspiring  and  old- 
fashioned.  That's  the  nightmare  part  of  it  all.  I 
daren't  face  that.  It  hurts  me  too  much.  So  I 
shut  my  eyes  and  turn  my  back  and  trust  the  men 
who  say,  like  Roger,  that  society,  without  women's 
votes,  is  gradually  reforming  the  horrors  that  in 
dustry  brings  into  the  world — society  and  the  labor 
organizations.  I  try  to  believe  they're  right.  In 
deed,  I  do  believe  it.  Everything  seems  to  point 
that  way,  doesn't  it?" 

"I'm  afraid  it  doesn't,"  Hope  said.  "Except  for 
the  labor  organizations.  They  accomplish  tremen 
dous  things,  but  at  tremendous  cost  in  hatred  and 
class  feeling  and  violence  and  destruction  and  checks 
to  prosperity.  All  that  they  do  and  much,  much 
more  might  be  done  by  just  plain,  honest  legislation 
— by  the  votes  of  millions  of  people  who  aren't 
hypnotized  by  money.  Women  aren't,  you  know. 
They'll  never  care  more  for  money  than  for  the 

[285] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

lives  and  well-being  of  their  sons  and  daughters  and 
husbands  and  brothers  and  sisters  who  work.  Life 
and  happiness  will  always  be  more  important  to 
women  than  the  word  of  a  political  boss.  They're 
nearer  to  the  heart  of  nature  than  men  are.  They 
don't  like  drink,  they  don't  like  *  wide-open'  towns, 
they  don't  like  dangerous  conditions  in  the  factories 
where  their  little  children  work;  and,  what's  more, 
once  they  have  the  vote,  they  won't  stand  themT] 
.  .  .  Oh,  well,  let's  not  argue.  This  is  all  beside 
the  point.  What  I  wanted  to  ask  you  about  was 
work — some  kind  of  work  that  would  be  doing  some 
thing  for  somebody.  You're  in  various  charities, 
aren't  you?" 

"Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Cartwright.  "Two  or  three." 
She  gave  a  nervous  sob  and  wiped  her  eyes.  "They 
seem  to  me  like  playing  with  blocks  in  a  nursery 
beside  the  kind  of  thing  you  speak  of.  When  I 
think  of  the  women  who  are  giving  their  lives  to 
remedy  such  a  state  of  affairs  as  that  I  want  to 
cheer  until  my  voice  is  gone.  I  want  to  cry.  And 
yet  there's  something  hi  me — " 

She  made  a  helpless  gesture,  and  Hope  laughed 
and  kissed  her  cheek. 

"Never  mind  all  that.  /  want  to  cheer,  too — and 
weep.  But  we  must  do  what  we  can.  Will  you 
tell  me  about  your  charity  organizations,  and  will 
you  help  me  to  find  some  work  in  them?" 

So  Mrs.  Cartwright  outlined  the  character  and 
scope  of  the  two  principal  charities  with  which  she 

[286] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

was  associated,  and  promised  to  find  a  place  for  her 
sister-in-law  on  their  boards. 

It  was  interesting  and  useful  work,  and  Hope  plunged 
into  it  with  a  kind  of  fury  of  eagerness.  It  was,  at 
least,  better  than  Caroline  Darnley's  program. 

But  this  is  not  to  say  that  she  turned  her  back 
on  Caroline  Darnley's  world;  far  from  it!  She  and 
Roger  both  entertained  and  went  out  a  great  deal, 
and  Hope  had  a  genuine  success.  Her  striking 
beauty  made  her  conspicuous  in  any  room,  however 
big  or  full  of  people,  and  everybody  seemed  to  like 
her.  She  was  simple  and  modest;  she  had  humor; 
she  seemed  grateful  for  every  attention,  however 
slight;  she  didn't  try  to  take  men  away  from  other 
women,  and  she  wasn't  a  cat.  It  became  a  kind  of 
Hope  Bacon  season.  Her  red  head  was  to  be  seen 
in  the  grandest  houses  of  the  town,  and  gentlemen 
young  and  old  pleaded  with  their  hostesses  to  be 
placed  next  her  at  dinner.  They  made  love  to  her, 
too,  any  quantity  of  them,  and  she  was  enchanted, 
and  told  Roger  all  about  it,  who  affected  jealous  rage, 
but  was  as  pleased  as  Punch. 

He  remained  the  perfect  lover.  Custom  didn't 
stale  his  delight  in  his  wife  nor  wither  his  expression 
of  it.  She  was  still  to  him  the  loveliest  and  most  won 
derful  of  all  living  beings  — the  eternal  enchantress. 
And  the  dread  that  had  lam  at  the  bottom  of  his 
heart  gradually  became  almost  forgotten,  since  she 
seemed  so  happy  in  her  new  life  and  so  content 
with  her  various  activities. 

[287] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Besides,  there  was  another  thing  still  to  draw 
them  the  closer  together  just  now.  The  best  thing 
there  could  be — hope  and  promise. 

He  had  never  talked  much  to  her  of  her  charitable 
enterprises.  Perhaps  he  had  been  just  a  little 
afraid.  But  the  appearance  of  contentment  lulled 
him  at  length  into  a  feeling  of  security,  and  he  asked 
her  one  day  how  she  was  coming  on.  It  was  in 
midwinter. 

She  may  quite  possibly,  that  day,  have  been  a  lit 
tle  tired  and  downhearted.  She  said: 

"Oh — one  does  what  one  can!  It's  a  good  work, 
of  course,  but,  Roger,  it's  only  touching  the  surface. 
It's  like  smearing  lotions  on  the  face  of  a  man  who's 
flushed  with  fever.  It's  like  trying  to  rid  a  swampy 
neighborhood  of  mosquitoes  by  killing  the  mos 
quitoes  one  by  one  instead  of  by  draining  the 
swamp  or  spreading  oil  on  it.  It's  legislation  these 
conditions  want,  not  individual  aid — just  decent, 
commonplace  legislation  by  people  who  haven't 
learned  to  be  callous  and  cynical.^} 

He  was  interested  by  that.  He  didn't  see  her 
drift  at  all,  and  asked  how  she  thought  such  legis 
lation  could  be  got. 

"The  women  could  get  it,"  she  said,  a  little  wearily. 
"In  fact,  they  will,  one  day.  They're  closer  to  hu 
man  suffering  than  men  are,  you  see.  It  seems  very 
important  to  them,  and  I  think  it  always  will  seem 
so." 

He  had  been  quite  unsuspicious  of  this  turn.    It 

[288] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

was  like  an  old  long-healed  wound  opening  again 
suddenly.  It  took  him  off  his  feet,  and  he  was  red 
and  angry  all  in  a  moment.  He  spoke  with  more 
sharpness  than  he  knew. 

"Great  Heavens!  Is  that  obsession  going  to  last 
with  you  forever?  I  thought  it  was  done  with — 
forgotten." 

"You  brought  the  subject  up,  Roger,"  she  re 
minded  him.  "You  asked  me  a  question.  I  an 
swered  it  with  just  what  I  thought.  I  know  I'm 
doing  a  little  temporary  good  in  this  charity  work, 
but  I  also  know  that  the  women  who  are  fighting 
for  political  representation  are  doing  the  great  and 
permanent  good.  I  feel  very  small  and  paltry  be 
side  them.  (And  at  that,  I'm  not  trying  to  attack 
organized  charities.  They're  magnificent — as  far  as 
they  go.)  I  feel  like  a  deserter  from  a  conquering 
army.  I  feel  rather  wretched,  if  you  care  to  know." 

She  hadn't  expected  to  say  as  much  as  that.  It 
said  itself  and  surprised  her.  It  left  her  a  little 
breathless.  But  it  left  Roger  fuming  and  bitter. 

"In  short,  you  wish  you  were  back  where  I  found 
you.  It  has  been  a  mistake,  leaving  this  Amazonian 
army  that  is  to  purify  the  world,  and  marrying  me? 
Is  that  the  truth?" 

She  said:  "Oh,  Roger!  Roger!"  gazing  at  him 
sorrowfully;  and  he  was  ashamed  of  his  violent 
words  and  looked  down.  But  he  met  her  eyes  again 
with  a  kind  of  defiance,  for  he  felt  that  his  back 
was  against  the  wall.  He  felt  that  he  was  fighting 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

for  their  happiness  against  a  morbid  and  wrong- 
headed  sentimentality. 

"Well,  what  is  it  you  want,  my  dear?  I'm  sorry 
to  have  been  brutal.  I  beg  your  pardon.  I  was 
angry  for  a  moment.  Just  what  is  it  you  want? 
You  had  your  fling  at  this — this  woman's  movement. 
It  tired  you  out — made  you  nervous  and  ill.  It  was 
half  killing  you.  You  found — forgive  me  for  putting 
it  straight  out — you  found  that  you  were  no  good 
at  the  work.  And  yet  now  you  seem  to  want  to  go 
back  and  do  it  all  over  again.  You  can  hardly 
blame  me  for  not  caring  to  see  my  wife  tear  herself 
to  bits  in  a  cause  that  I  hold  to  be  foolish  and  worse 
than  useless." 

"No,  Roger,"  she  said,  "I  can't  blame  you  for 
anything — not  even  for  failing  to  understand.  I've 
no  thought  of  going  back  to  what  I  failed  hi  once. 
That  would  be  silly  indeed.  I've  no  definite  thought 
about  it  at  all — just  sorrow  and  regret  and  a  kind  of 
— yearning.  If  only  there  were  something  a  weak 
ling  like  me  could  do  to  help!  I  see  them  marching 
on  past  me,  and  I  can  only  stand  by  like  a  soldier 
that  has  been  rejected.  I  cared,  Roger,  I  did  care 
so!  I  care  now.  I  might  as  well  say  it.  Let's  be 
frank  with  each  other,  you  and  I.  Last  year  when 
I  broke  down,  that  dreadful  night,  and  couldn't 
make  my  little  speech,  I  was  discouraged  and  bitter. 
The  whole  thing,  the  entire  movement,  looked  im 
possible  and  preposterous  to  me.  My  nerves  were 
worn  out.  So  I  tried  to  forget  it.  But  it  won't 

[290] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

stay  forgotten.  It's  too  big  and  too  important  and 
too  true.  It's  in  my  soul,  and  I  can't  keep  it  out. 
C'est  plus  fort  que  moi.  .  .  .  But,  my  dear  love,  don't 
be  disturbed  over  it  or  over  me.  I  came  to  you 
knowing  that  you  disapproved  of  The  Cause,  and, 
although  I  made  you  no  promises,  I  mean  to — to 
play  the  game.  There's  to  be  no  divided  house  here 
if  /  can  help  it.  Of  course,  I  wish  you  felt  differ 
ently  about  the  thing.  I  wish  I  had  your  sympathy 
in  it.  I  think  I  could  bear  being  useless  if  only  I  had 
you  to — slap  me  on  the  back  now  and  then.  I  feel 
so  alone." 

He  spread  out  his  hands  in  a  helpless  gesture. 

"What  can  I  say?  There's  no  good  my  pretend 
ing.  Is  there?  [l_  think  this  movement  is  useless 
and  mischievous.  It  revolts  me.  Good  govern 
ment  and  proper  industrial  conditions  will  infallibly 
come  without  women's  help.  They're  coming  now, 
bit  by  bit.  It's  insulting  to  decent  manhood  to  say 
that  we're  incapable  of  advancing  civilization  as  we 
have  advanced  it  up  to  the  present  time.  It's  hard 
to  be  patient  with  such  neurotic  folly."!  Look  at — 
Oh,  well,  what's  the  good?" 

"No  good,  Roger,"  she  said,  shaking  her  head  at 
him.  "No  good  at  all — while  it's  so  hard  for  you 
to  be  patient,  as  you  say.  We'd  much  better  let  it 
alone.  I  wish  we  might  talk  it  over,  step  by  step — 
'thresh  it  out,'  as  Aunt  Alice  says;  but  you  wouldn't 
care  to  do  that.  Let's  put  it  away  and  lock  the  door 
on  it." 

[291] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

She  came  to  him  and  kissed  him,  a  little  listlessly, 
on  the  cheek,  and  he  was  ashamed  of  having  shown 
bitterness.  He  reproached  himself  aloud,  calling 
himself  hard  names.  He  gathered  her  into  his  arms, 
in  the  big  chair  before  the  fire,  and  made  love  to 
her.  He  told  her  she  was  the  most  beautiful  woman 
in  the  world,  and  went  into  great  details  about  it. 
He  was  still  the  perfect  lover. 

Hope  hid  her  face  in  the  hollow  of  his  neck  and 
lay  there  dreaming  of  the  Hope  and  the  Promise 
that  were  to  come. 

Henry  Cartwright,  who  had  cherished  a  very  real 
though  undemonstrative  affection  for  Hope  ever 
since  the  days  at  Deauville  before  her  marriage,  and 
who  dropped  in  on  her  now  and  then  in  the  late 
afternoon,  waylaid  Roger  at  a  certain  club  some 
time  after  this  conversation,  and  said  in  his  gruff 
fashion : 

"Your  wife's  not  looking  well." 

Roger  thought  her  as  well  as  certain  circumstances 
would  permit;  but  Cartwright  seemed  unconvinced. 

"Nora  believes  she's  worrying  her  head  over  this 
Woman  Suffrage  business." 

Roger  spoke  briefly  under  his  breath,  perhaps  on 
the  well-known  inability  of  sisters  to  mind  their 
own  business.  But  aloud  he  .said: 

"She's  not  quite  herself,  these  days,  Henry. 
Women  are  apt  to  worry  and  imagine  things  and 
manufacture  troubles  at  such  tunes,  I'm  told.  Eh, 
what?  What  will  you  drink?" 

[292] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Mr.  Cartwright  said  what  he  would  drink,  but 
eyed  his  brother-in-law  with  a  steady  and  still  un 
convinced  gaze. 

"Opposition  and  lack  of  sympathy  not  recom 
mended  under  the  circumstances,"  he  submitted. 

"I  can't  tell  lies." 

"No,  no.  But  you  might  try  exercising  your 
spine  now  and  again.  It's  a  stiff  one.  The  trouble 
with  you,  my  lad,  is  that  you've  got  a  padlocked 
mind.  It  seldom  occurs  to  you  that  the  other  fellow 
may  be  right  once  in  a  way.  You're  too  sure  of 
yourself." 

Roger  looked  at  him  with  amazement. 

"Good  God,  Henry \i You  don't  mean  to  say 
you're  standing  up  for  the  Shrieking  Sisters  and  their 
poisonous  blither?  Rubbish!  You  know  perfectly 
well  they  haven't  the  minds  for  politics."  / 

"Not  so  fast!"  said  Mr.  Cartwright,  cautiously. 
"Not — so — fast,  my  young  friend.  There  are  pre 
cious  few  things  in  the  world  that  I  'know  perfectly 
well.'  Mind  you,  I  don't  say  these  women  have 
absolutely  won  me  over — convinced  me.  And  yet — 
(Look  here,  they've  got  good  enough  minds  for  any 
other  game  they  choose  to  play,  haven't  they? 
They  beat  you  and  me  at  books  and  pictures  and 
music.  The  average  woman  we  know  has  got  a 
quicker  and  better  intelligence  on  most  subjects 
than  the  average  man.  I've  a  woman  secretary 
down  in  my  office  who's  worth  all  the  rest  of  my  staff 
put  together.  They  run  charity  organizations  and 

[293] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

clubs  and  societies.  What's  so  damn  sacred  about 
politics  that  they  should  be  unfit  to  come  near  it? 
How  much  brains  do  ordinary  political  or  legislative 
questions  demand,  eh?  Very  little.  And,  besides, 
we've  too  much  brains  in  the  political  field  already 
—too  many  clever  crooks.  What  we  want  is  a  bit 
of  simple,  direct  honesty.  <And  I'm  not  so  sure  the 
women  can't  furnish  that.** 

"Votes  for  Women!"  murmured  Mr.  Bacon, 
staring.  "Down  with  the  nasty  brutes  of  men! 
Where's  your  window  -  smasher,  Henry?  Where's 
your  half  brick  in  a  stocking?  You  of  all  people! 
My  Lord!" 

But  his  brother-in-law  wagged  an  undisturbed  head. 

"Laugh  on!  Have  your  laugh  out!  It  '11  do  you 
good.  And  then  when  you've  done,  open  your 
eyes  and  ears,  my  friend,  to  what's  going  on  about 
you!  Talk  to  your  Progressive  Politics  friends! 
(They  tell  me  you've  neglected  them  since  your 
marriage.)  Talk  to  your  pals  here  in  this  club. 
You'll  find  an  important  minority  of  'em  cheering 
the  women  on.  You're  falling  a  little  behind  the 
procession,  you  and  your  ready-made  mind.  Let 
some  of  the  women  themselves  talk  to  you!  Read 
^their  books  and  reports!  Listen  to  your  own  wife! 
c  They'll  tell  you  American  politics  and  the  American 
industrial  world  stand  in  great  need  to-day  of  just 
the  simple  sanity,  the  homely  incorruptible  common 
sense  that  women  could  and  would  bring  into  it, 
and  I'm  not  so  sure  they're 

[294] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

Roger  shook  his  head,  very  much  as  if  he  were 
shaking  off  flies. 

"Did  Nora  put  you  up  to  this?  Is  this  a  kind 
of  elaborate  domestic  plot?" 

"No,"  said  Cartwright,  stolidly.  "I  often  talk 
out  of  my  own  head — though  seldom,  perhaps,  at 
such  length." 

He  chose  a  cigar  from  a  pocket  case  and  lighted 
it  with  some  care. 

"Speaking  of  Nora,  did  it  ever  occur  to  you  that 
your  wife  and  mine  are  a  good  deal  alike?" 

"Not  about  Woman  Suffrage,  certainly." 

"No.  Not  about  that.  That's  an  interesting 
difference.  I'm  coming  to  that  presently.  The 
resemblance  is  deeper  than  any  matters  of  belief. 
It's  in  their  characters.  They're  both  very  feminine 
women  with  an  extraordinary  sensitiveness  to  hu 
man  suffering.  (^The  injustice  and  wrong  and  pain 
in  this  world  hurt  'em  both  unbearably,  and  they 
both  react  under  it.  They're  compelled  to  do 
something."  [Now  comes  the  interesting  difference. 
Each  of  tfiem  reacts  according  to  the  standards  of 
her  own  generation.  My  wife  grew  up  before 
Woman  Suffrage  was  much  in  the  public  eye.  So 
her  reactions  took  the  only  possible  form — old- 
fashioned  charity  work.  Now,  your  wife  is  my  wife 
modernized.  She's  my  wife  plus  the  scientific  di 
rection  and  the  efficiency  of  this  age.  She's  Nora 
made  about  a  hundred  times  more  useful,  poten 
tially,  to  the  community.  Nora  realizes  that.  She 

[295] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

said  so  to  me  just  the  other  day.  She'd  like  to 
modernize  herself,,  but  it's  a  bit  too  late.  She's  past 
forty." 

"I'm  unable  to  make  out,"  said  Roger,  coldly, 
"that  Hope's  *  modern  efficiency,'  as  you  rather 
grandly  call  it,  has  been  of  much  more  use  to  the 
Sacred  Cause  than  Nora's  old-fashioned  inefficiency 
would  have  been.  She  tried  to  put  it  to  work  last 
year,  you  may  remember.  Well,  it  failed." 

"That's  true.  It  failed.  Maybe  she  went  at  it 
from  the  wrong  side.  Maybe  she  tried  the  wrong 
job.  I'm  not  familiar  with  the  methods  of  what 
you  call  the  Shrieking  Sisters;  but  I  think  there 
must  be  a  variety  of  jobs  in  their  movement.  And 
Hope's  not  the  kind  of  woman  to  stay  beaten. 
She  has  too  much  vitality,  both  physical  and  mental, 
for  that." 

"You  mean  she's  restless  with  no  more  occupation 
than  going  out  to  dinner  parties  and  dances  and  the 
opera?  Well,  wait  a  bit,  Henry!  Wait  until  June! 
If  all  goes  well  she'll  have  occupation  enough  after 
that  to  keep  her  happy  and  contented." 

He  stopped  abruptly,  for  it  occurred  to  him  that 
this  turn  of  the  subject  was  not  one  to  dwell  upon 
with  old  Henry.  Henry's  and  Nora's  sorrow  over 
the  loss  of  their  child  was  imperishable.  But  Cart- 
wright  shook  his  head. 

^lYou're  incorrigibly  Victorian.  For  Heaven's 
sake  get  yourself  up  to  date!  Women  in  our  sphere 
of  life  don't  turn  themselves  into  nursemaids — not 

[296] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

even  the  fondest  and  the  most  maternal  of  them. 
A  child  will  be  a  new  interest  to  your  wife,  and  she'll 
make  a  good  mother;  but,  hang  it,  Roger,  the  mind 
and  the  larger  human  sympathies  don't  shrivel  up 
and  die  just  because  one  becomes  a  parent.  That's 
a  preposterous  idea.",\ 

"And  this  is  a  preposterous  conversation!"  said 
Roger.  He  was  rasped  raw,  and  suddenly,  as  in 
that  painf ul  scene  with  Hope,  found  himself  red  and 
angry.  Was  the  whole  world  going  mad  round 
about  him?  Old  Henry  of  all  people! 

He  liked  his  brother-in-law  far  too  well  to  quarrel 
with  him,  however  trying  the  man  might  be,  and 
he  pulled  himself  up  with  a  strong  effort.  It  dis 
mayed  him  to  see  what  a  strong  effort  was  needed. 

"Come,  Henry!  Let's  talk  about  the  little  birds 
and  the  flowers.  I'm  fed  up  with  Amazons.  What 
are  you  and  Nora  going  to  do  in  the  spring?  You 
going  to  get  any  tarpon-fishing?" 

Cartwright  growled  at  him,  but  was  shrewd 
enough  to  see  that  he  was  at  the  end  of  his  patience, 
and  so  let  the  talk  drift  where  it  would.  But  he 
himself  was  a  little  impatient,  too,  and  presently 
made  excuses  and  took  himself  off  still  growling  like 
a  big  dog  that  has  been  annoyed. 

Roger  sat  on  where  he  was,  in  a  big  leather  chair 
near  one  of  the  windows.  His  brother-in-law's  at 
tack  had  astonished  and  depressed  him,  and  he  felt 
sore  and  ill  used.  No  man  likes  to  be  told  that  he 
is  old-fashioned  and  narrow-minded  in  his  views, 

[297] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

and  Roger  was  exceedingly  sure  that  the  accusation 
was  unjust.  He  considered  himself  very  liberal, 
as  men  go,  and  so  in  many  ways  he  was.  But 
there  were  certain  cardinal  decencies  that  had  to  be 
preserved.  Civilization  was  built  on  them.  Take 
them  out  and  the  whole  fabric  must  be  disturbed 
— overhauled — perhaps  fatally  hurt — and  propped 
up  again  on  other  standards.  A  filthy  business  at 
best. 

He  was  puzzled  about  old  Henry,  though.  Where 
had  the  man  got  these  ideas?  Not  from  Nora. 
She  didn't  go  in  for  them. 

He  suddenly  remembered  that  Henry  was  in  the 
way  of  dropping  in  at  Sixty-ninth  Street.  Hope 
often  spoke  of  his  being  there.  So  that  was  it! 
Hope  had  been  at  him.  They'd  planned  together 
a  flank  attack  on  the  enemy. 

His  face  hardened,  and  he  was  angry  again,  so 
angry  that  he  couldn't  sit  still.  He  jumped  up  and 
began  to  walk  about  the  room,  to  the  great  annoy 
ance  of  several  old  gentlemen.  He  encountered 
Ned  Pierson,  whom  he  hadn't  seen  for  some  time, 
looking  sullen  and  rather  ill.  In  his  nervous  dis 
organization  he  had  the  bad  taste  to  ask  Pierson 
how  the  Sacred  Cause  was  coming  on,  and  the  man 
gave  him  a  bitter  grin. 

"I  wish  all  women  were  in  hell." 

Roger  laughed  and  left  him. 

But  that  evening  he  spoke  to  his  wife  about 
Henry  Cartwright's  discourse,  accusing  her  straight 

[298] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

of  putting  Henry  up  to  it.     And  he  was  still  angry, 
and  didn't  mince  his  words. 

She  gave  him  a  look  he  never  forgot,  and  said, 
"You'll  be  sorry  for  that,  one  day,  Roger,"  and 
went  to  her  room. 
20 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

TOWARD  the  end  of  February  the  Bacons  went 
to  one  of  the  smaller  Florida  resorts  for  a 
space  of  rest  and  quiet.  They  were  on  good  terms 
again,  and  took  great  care  that  the  terms  shouldn't 
be  disturbed.  Indeed,  on  the  occasion  of  that  last 
outbreak  Roger  had  immediately  done  all  he  could 
to  make  reparation.  Her  look  frightened  and 
shamed  the  anger  out  of  him  in  an  instant,  and  he 
insisted  upon  being  admitted  to  her  room,  where 
she  had  locked  herself  in,  and  upon  abasing  himself 
before  her.  He  called  himself  hard  names.  He  was 
a  beast,  a  suspicious  tyrant.  He  deserved  death  by 
horrible  and  revolting  means.  He  should  never  for 
give  himself;  so  Hope  must  forgive  him  instead. 
He  couldn't  understand  what  devils  had  got  into 
him. 

And  that  was  quite  true.  He  was  honestly  aghast 
at  the  storms  of  rage  that  had  swept  him,  at  the 
vein  of  hardness  in  his  character  that  these  dis 
turbances  had  laid  bare.  He  had  never  suspected 
such  qualities  in  himself.  They  didn't  seem  to  him 
to  belong  to  his  nature.  He  had  what  might  be 
termed  a  number  of  serious  interviews  with  himself 

[800] 


THE    OPENING   DOOR 

on  the  matter.  He  took  himself  soberly  in  hand. 
Outbreaks  like  that  must  be  stopped,  he  said. 
Above  all,  nothing  must  occur  during  the  next  few 
months  to  disturb  Hope's  tranquillity.  Her  physical 
and  mental  state,  from  now  until  June,  must  be  the 
most  important  consideration  in  his  life. 

He  had,  before  leaving  town,  a  brief  talk  with 
his  sister — or  rather  she  had  it  with  him.  And  he 
listened  to  a  few  home  truths  from  that  usually 
amiable  lady  which  shook  him  a  little  on  his  founda 
tions.  She  was  disappointed  in  him,  it  appeared; 
and  that  hurt  him,  for  he  was  fond  of  Nora,  and 
had  great  respect  for  her  opinions.  They  thought 
alike  about  so  many  things  that  when  she  told  him 
he  had  been  behaving  like  a  Turkish  country  gentle 
man  the  words  stuck  in  his  mind  and  rankled  there. 

It  was  a  very  lazy  life  they  led  in  Florida.  They 
had  purposely  chosen  a  place  that  was  neither  large 
nor  gay,  and  as  a  result  they  found  there  nobody  of 
their  acquaintance.  They  walked  and  drove;  Roger 
bathed;  but  Hope  wasn't  allowed  to,  and  so  had 
to  watch,  rather  resentfully,  from  the  beach.  And 
they  sat  long  hours  in  a  shady  garden  that  was 
full  of  sweet  odors  and  the  clean  breath  of  the  sea. 

Hope  had  brought  down  a  lot  of  books,  and  read 
them,  lying  in  her  chaise  longue  in  the  garden.  They 
were  serious  books,  Roger  found,  when  he  picked 
them  up  to  look  ajt  the  titles — works  for  the  most 
part  on  economics  and  sociology. 

"You  see,"  she  explained,  laughing  at  his  rather 

[301] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

solemn  surprise — "you  see,  I'm  trying  to  catch  up. 
I  never  had  any  education  worth  speaking  of — just 
a  girl's  school  of  the  older  type.  I've  found  myself 
appallingly  ignorant  of  the  things  intelligent  people 
are  interested  in  nowadays.  I'm  ashamed  to  be 
such  a  fool." 

Roger  looked  at  her  a  little  doubtfully,  and  took 
up  one  of  the  books  that  were  lying  on  the  grass 
beside  her  chair.  It  was  the  Evolution  Creatrice  of 
M.  Bergson.  He  turned  the  pages  and  puzzled  out 
a  sentence  here  and  there,  for  he  read  French  with 
some  difficulty,  though  he  could  speak  it  well  enough 
to  get  about.  He  gave  a  little  sigh  and  dropped  M. 
Bergson's  work  again  in  its  place. 

"I'm  afraid  that's  a  bit  beyond  my  depth,"  he 
said.  "Don't  you  ever  read  novels?" 

She  said  she  had  read  heaps  of  them  when  she  was 
a  girl. 

"And  I'm  quite  sure  I  shall  read  heaps  more, 
presently.  They're  far  and  away  the  best  medium 
for  large  ideas,  I  think.  Look  at  Wells  and  Gals 
worthy  and  Chesterton!  But  just  now  I  want  cold 
facts — records — the  things  they  ought  to  have  taught 
me  at  school  but  didn't." 

He  was  oddly  depressed  by  this  little  conversa 
tion,  and  left  her  there  with  her  "cold  facts,"  and 
went  down  to  walk  on  the  beach,  where  he  fell 
in  with  a  university  gentleman  from  the  middle 
west,  whose  acquaintance  he  and  Hope  had  already 
made. 

[302] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

The  university  gentleman  pointed  with  his  gi 
gantic  brier  pipe. 

"Observe  the  blue  of  that  sea!  Regard  the  sky 
above  you,  which  is  cloudless!  Gaze  upon  the  hue 
of  this  beach  and  the  tint  of  those  trees  inland !  The 
world  is  a  hollow  sphere,  and  a  preposterous  god 
child  has  striped  it  with  blue  and  gold  and  green 
paint.  I  am  happy,  but  you  aren't.  You  look 
down.  Don't  you  like  a  striped  world?" 

Roger  laughed  at  the  quaint  westerner  and  shook 
his  head. 

"Oh,  the  world's  all  right!  But  my  self-esteem 
has  been  suffering.  I  have  just  become  aware  that 
my  wife  has  left  me  far  behind — intellectually  speak 
ing.  In  the  natural  course  of  events  she'll  soon 
begin  to  think  me  rather  a  fool." 

"Your  wife,"  said  the  university  gentleman,  "is 
a  product  of  the  times — a  phenomenon  of  a  peculiar 
civilization.  She  is  also,  if  I  may  say  it,  a  very 
charming  lady.  I  have  talked  with  her.  She  has 
an  open  mind.  She  wants  to  think  and  to  know." 

He  glanced  at  the  tall  young  man  beside  him,  and 
said: 

"We  have  an  odd  country  here.  Apart  from  a 
little  aristocracy  of  scholars  and  literary  and  scien 
tific  men,  the  mental  culture  of  this  land  is  in  the 
possession  of  the  women.  Our  national  intellectu 
ality  is  feminine.  Why?  For  a  variety  of  reasons. 
The  men  are  at  work  all  day  in  offices,  and  when 
they  go  home  in  the  evening  they  wish  to  rest,  to 

[303] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

amuse  themselves,  not  to  study  or  reflect.  That  is 
one  reason.  Another  one  is  that  intellectual  effort 
or  attainment,  serious  discussion,  the  reading  of 
good  books,  all  are  out  of  fashion;  they  are  a  little 
despised,  laughed  at;  they  are  not  manly.  .  .  .  You 
are  a  college  graduate?  Yes,  I  thought  so.  Was  it 
the  fashion  to  study,  to  learn,  to  discuss  at  your 
university?" 

"No,"  said  Roger,  with  a  kind  of  slow  surprise. 
"Why,  no,  it  wasn't.  We  looked  down  at  the  men 
who  worked.  Called  'em  *  grinds.'  It  was  the 
fashion  to  go  in  for  athletics  and  societies  and  the 
college  papers.  I  took  a  four-year  course  in  rowing, 
myself." 

The  western  gentleman  nodded  at  that. 

"Exactly.  And  your  case  is  typical  of  what  has 
existed  for  some  years — a  generation.  You  didn't 
study;  you  didn't  learn;  you  formed  no  taste  for 
reading  or  research;  you  acquired  no  habit  of 
thought.  There  are  hundreds  of  thousands  of  young 
university  men  like  you — the  *  educated*  men  of  our 
country.  And  you,  of  course,  set  the  mental  fashions 
for  the  rest  of  the  populace. 

"But  the  women?" 

"Ah,  the  women!  There,  you  see,  it's  different. 
They  begin  to  read  early.  To  be  sure,  they  read 
works  of  fiction,  but  it  is  still  reading — and  often 
very  good  reading,  too.  They  form  the  habit.  At 
the  so-called  fashionable  schools  their  minds  are 
smothered,  asphyxiated,  though  seldom  killed  out- 

[804] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

right.  But  at  the  colleges  they  really  learn  some 
thing.  They  study  and  they  acquire.  Later  they 
go  on  with  it,  for  they  have  the  habit.  They  make 
up  little  clubs,  societies,  reading-circles,  and  study 
the  problems  of  the  day,  while  you,  their  brothers 
and  husbands,  work  in  your  offices.  And  now,  with 
incredible  speed,  they  have  passed  far  beyond  the 
inactive  stage.  They  have  been  thinking  while  they 
read  and  learned.  They  have  come  to  know  them 
selves.  So  they  stand  up  in  a  great,  brave,  efficient 
army,  and  say,  'Give  us  our  own — or  we  will  come 
and  take  it!": 

"I  suppose,"  Roger  said,  wearily,  "you  mean 
Equal  Suffrage." 

And  the  westerner  said:  "Yes.  That  is  what  I 
mean." 

"Are  you  for  it?" 

"Well — is  any  clear-thinking  man  against  it?" 

"I'm  against  it,  for  one!"  the  younger  man  cried 
out,  with  a  kind  of  violence. 

But  the  western  professor  smiled  on  at  him,  as 
if  he  were  still  waiting  for  that  question  to  be  an 
swered,  and  Roger  realized  with  a  shock  that  by  his 
own  admissions  lie  had  forfeited  the  right  to  be 
considered  a  "clear-thinking  man." 

"I  can't  argue  with  you,"  he  said.  "You've  no 
doubt  got  all  the  weapons  ready  in  your  pocket — all 
the  usual  ammunition.  You  could  bring  me  to  a 
stop;  but  you  couldn't  convince  me,  and  so  we 
won't  talk  about  it.  The  thing  seems  to  me  a  wicked 

[305] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

blunder  for  very  simple  reasons.  Indeed,  it's  either 
right  or  wrong  for  the  simplest  reasons  in  the  world, 
not  for  an  elaborate  scheme." 

And  the  other  man  turned  upon  him  an  eye  of 
almost  respectful  surprise  and  said: 

"You're  right.    It  is." 

In  mid-April  they  went  north  again,  and  after 
a  few  days  at  home  moved  on  to  New  Haven,  where 
the  Standish  house,  now  tenantless,  was  awaiting 
them.  It  had  been  Hope's  idea  to  go  there  for  the 
last  of  her  waiting.  It  was  her  wish  that  her  child 
should  there  come  into  the  world.  And  Roger  glad 
ly  acquiesced,  for  he  knew  that  his  wife  would  be 
both  happier  and  more  comfortable  in  the  big  sunny 
rooms  of  her  old  home  than  in  the  somewhat  cramped 
quarters  of  the  house  in  Sixty-ninth  Street,  with  the 
noise  of  the  city  grinding  in  upon  her. 

He  himself  was  unable  to  remain  in  New  Haven 
constantly,  for  his  own  and  his  aunts'  affairs  de 
manded  a  good  deal  of  attention  just  then.  But 
Hope  had  Miss  Cornelia  Hitchcock  whenever  she 
needed  company.  (Miss  Goffe  had  married  and 
moved  to  Boston.)  Caroline  Darnley,  who  didn't 
mean  to  go  abroad  until  after  the  great  event,  came 
up  from  town  at  intervals  for  two  or  three  days  at 
a  time,  and  Nora  Cartwright  too.  Miss  King  made 
flying  week-end  visits,  and  even  little  Emily  Brooks 
arrived  in  May  and  remained  for  almost  a  fort 
night. 

[306] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

She  gradually  gave  up  her  reading.  The  thirst 
for  knowledge — for  understanding — died  away  from 
her  as  almost  all  other  interests  did.  Her  thoughts 
turned  inward  toward  the  mystery  and  the  miracle 
that  was  to  come.  She  was  giving  now,  not  taking. 
She  was  giving  life. 

But  as  womanhood  had  come  to  her  without 
shock,  with  a  sweet  peacefulness,  a  kind  of  glory, 
so  motherhood  came  in  its  turn.  She  had  never 
been  ill  in  her  life,  and  she  was  not  ill  now.  She 
remained  strong  and  active  to  the  last,  with  no 
nervous  disturbances,  no  morbid  fears.  Roger  was 
there  constantly  -during  the  final  month,  and  it 
seemed  to  her  that  never  had  they  been  so  close 
together  in  sympathy  and  understanding.  He  was 
still  the  perfect  lover. 

She  moved  about  the  big  house  with  a  kind  of 
dreamy  serenity — with  a  smile  on  her  lips,  as  if 
she  had  a  little  joke  all  her  own.  And  so  she  had. 
For  there  is  nothing  solemn  about  birth  if  you  look 
at  it  straight.  Two  people  love  each  other,  and  all 
at  once,  by  a  kind  of  preposterous  conjuring  trick, 
there  is  another  person  with  eyes  and  hands  and  feet 
and  a  voice — perfect  in  every  part.  It  is  the  best 
joke  in  the  world,  and  never  grows  old.  It  is  as  full 
of  laughter  as  love  itself.  It  is  as  hilarious  as  the 
sunshine.  I  seem  to  hear  the  great  Conjuror  roar 
ing  over  it  all  across  the  world  in  a  perfect  paroxysm 
of  thunderous,  splendid  mirth. 

She  seemed  to  have  taken  up  again  that  old  mys- 

[307] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

terious  and  long-interrupted  intimacy  with  the 
marble  lady  beneath  the  stairs.  She  often  stood 
before  the  statue  gazing  with  her  little  smile  into 
Athene's  face.  It  seemed  to  afford  her  an  inex 
plicable  satisfaction. 

She  said  once  to  Miss  King: 

"I  suppose  Roger  would  like  a  son.  I've  asked 
him,  and  he's  such  a  dear!  He  won't  tell.  You 
see,  he  doesn't  want  me  to  be  disappointed  which 
ever  way  it  turns  out.  But,  Aunt  Alice,  I  want  a 
little  girl.  I  do  so  want  a  little  girl.  I  want  to 
teach  her  what  I  wasn't  taught.  I  want  her  to 
grow  up  to  be  what  I  couldn't  be.  Then  I  sha'n't 
feel  that  I've  altogether  failed.  Do  you  under 
stand  what  I  mean?" 

Miss  King  did,  and  wept.  But  Hope  laughed 
instead, 'and  went  to  find  her  husband. 

With  astonishingly  little  distress  she  was  de 
livered  of  a  girl  child  on  the  seventh  of  June — a 
fine,  strong  child  that  wept  like  anything  and  had 
red  hair  like  its  mother. 

It  lay  quiet,  at  last,  in  the  hollow  of  her  arm,  and 
Roger  hung  over  them,  beaming  in  the  ridiculous 
fashion  young  fathers  have. 

Hope  smiled  up  at  him.  She  said :  "  I'm  going  to  call 
her  *  Faith,'  Roger."  But  she  wouldn't  explain  why. 

She  was  on  her  feet  in  a  week's  time,  and  at  the 
end  of  June  they  went  to  a  place  on  the  Maine  coast 
for  the  remainder  of  the  summer. 

[308] 


CHAPTER  XXV 

IT  began  to  occur  to  Roger  Bacon  that  he  wasn't 
getting  the  maximum  of  satisfaction  out  of  his 
life.  That  was  a  quaint  thought  for  him  to  have — 
at  least,  it  was  new  and  unusual  for  him  to  put  it 
to  himself  straight,  like  that,  in  so  many  words,  for 
he  was  a  simple-minded,  straightforward  young 
man,  and  not  given  to  analysis  of  any  kind.  But  he 
sat  in  a  comfortable  chair  in  a  comfortable  club 
window  on  a  day  in  the  early  winter,  and  rather 
gloomily  envisaged  his  existence. 

In  a  general  way  he  realized  that  most  people 
would  consider  him  exceedingly  lucky — and  so  he 
was.  He  had  more  income  than  he  spent.  He  had 
youth  and  good  health.  He  had  a  wife  more  beau 
tiful  than  other  women,  whom  he  loved  and  who 
loved  him  back.  He  had  a  promising  daughter  with 
red  hair.  He  had  plenty  of  friends  and  no  enemies. 

That  was  an  imposing  list  of  possessions,  and  on 
the  face  of  it  a  man  not  perfectly  happy  with  them 
must  be  a  fool.  And  yet  there  was  somewhere  some 
thing  wrong  or  lacking.  All  the  makings  of  happi 
ness  were  there,  but  they  wanted — perhaps  the 
solvent. 

[309] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

There  had  been  no  friction  between  him  and 
Hope.  Indeed,  no  occasion  for  it  had  arisen.  They 
had  been  a  very  united  family  through  the  summer 
in  Maine,  and  even  later,  after  their  return  to  New 
York.  Hope  was  the  fondest  and  best  of  mothers, 
but  she  hadn't  made  a  common  mistake  by  forgetting 
that  she  was  a  wife  as  well.  He  had  had  no  reason 
to  complain  through  jealousy  of  young  Miss  Bacon. 
He  had  enjoyed  himself  in  other  than  domestic 
ways,  too.  He  had  played  golf  and  tennis;  he  had 
sailed  and  gone  fishing;  he  had  bathed  in  the  cold 
Maine  sea.  It  sent  him  back  to  town  tanned  and 
vigorous.  And  yet  something  somewhere  was  wrong. 

Hope  had  a  small  dinner  party  that  evening — a 
dozen  people  or  so.  They  were  people  Roger  didn't 
know  very  well,  though  the  women  on  either  side 
of  him  were  old  friends.  Indeed,  as  he  looked  about 
he  saw  that  nearly  all  the  feminine  element  was  of 
what  might  be  called  his  world;  but  the  men,  for 
the  most  part,  were  not.  They  were  men  who  did 
things;  they  were  interested  in  politics  or  some  im 
portant  public  movement,  or  they  wrote  books  or 
plays,  or  they  were  visiting  foreigners  who  had  more 
than  their  names  to  recommend  them.  Scarcely  one 
of  them  belonged  to  any  of  the  clubs  he  frequented, 
except  perhaps  the  University,  and  he  wasn't  much 
in  the  way  of  meeting  them  at  other  houses.  At 
least,  he  thought  not.  He  wasn't  quite  sure. 

It  occurred  to  him  that  Hope  had  been  rather 
specializing  in  this  kind  of  people  of  late,  and  he 

[310J 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

wondered  why.  He  listened,  sitting  silent  at  his 
end  of  the  table,  to  the  conversation  about,  and  be 
came  aware  that  the  spirit  in  the  room  was  a  spirit 
unfamiliar  to  him.  These  women,  among  whom  he 
had  been  brought  up,  and  whose  families  he  had 
known  ever  since  his  childhood,  were  talking  with 
both  ease  and  interest  to  the  strange  young  men 
about  things  quite  outside  the  sphere  of  his  habitual 
thought.  It  gave  him  the  same  little  unpleasant, 
depressing  shock  that  he  had  suffered  when  he  found 
Hope  reading  the  Evolution  Creatrice.  Yet  it  wasn't 
"highbrow"  talk  exactly;  it  seemed  to  be  serious 
discussion  of  problems  of  the  day — political,  in 
dustrial,  economic.  And  all  these  people  seemed  to 
know  a  surprising  lot  about  each  problem  and  how 
it  had  been  tested  here  and  there,  and  what  had , 
been  found  good  or  bad  in  it.  It  reminded  him  a 
little  of  those  progressive  political  lunches  of  his 
two  or  three  years  back,  and  he  tried  to  remember 
just  why  it  was  he  had  come  to  drop  them,  together 
with  all  activity  and  interest  in  the  movements  they 
represented.  It  had  been  a  gradual  slackening,  he 
thought.  He  had  just  fallen  away  by  degrees  at 
the  time  he  had  begun  to  pursue  Hope  Standish. 
Love  and  politics  had  seemed  hard  to  combine.  Per 
haps  they  needn't  have  been,  but  he  hadn't  tried 
to  combine  them,  anyhow. 

He  caught  Hope's  eyes  down  the  table,  and  she 
seemed  to  be  looking  at  him  with  a  faint  anxiety, 
as  if  she  feared  he  was  being  bored.  So  he  turned 

[311] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

with  a  sigh  to  old  Mrs.  Linford,  who  sat  at  his 
right,  and  asked  her  if  she  was  going  to  the  Trevor 
Hulls'  fancy  dress  party  the  next  evening.  Old  Mrs. 
Linford  met  his  advances  amiably  enough,  and  they 
talked  for  a  little  while,  but  it  wasn't  long  until 
she  turned  again  to  the  man  beyond  her,  and  Roger 
heard  them  squabbling  with  great  animation  over 
some  people  called  "futurists."  He  listened  apa 
thetically,  and  gathered  that  futurists  were  a  spe 
cies  of  painters.  He  had  never  before  heard  of  them. 

There  came  one  of  those  fortuitous  lulls  in  the 
general  chatter,  and  in  the  lull  somebody's  voice, 
continuing  a  conversation,  spoke  the  word  "Suf 
frage."  It  was  as  if  that  word  were  a  lighted  match, 
and  the  whole  company  of  agreeable  people,  tow. 
In  the  space  of  a  breath  they  were  ablaze  on  all  sides. 
It  was  amazing  to  him  to  behold  the  eagerness  with 
which  they  fell  upon  the  thing  he  so  despised,  and 
began  to  discuss  it.  It  was  like  the  casual  mention 
of  the  word  "battle"  in  war-time  where  men  are 
gathered  together. 

Once  more  he  listened,  for  perhaps  they  had  sprung 
at  this  hated  subject  only  to  tear  it  to  pieces.  But 
it  wasn't  so.  They  were,  in  their  varying  fashions 
and  degrees,  soberly  interested  in  it.  It  seemed  to 
them  a  serious  matter  fit  for  serious  discussion.  One 
gray-haired  German  diplomatic  gentleman  from 
Washington  said  it  would  go  down  in  history  as  the 
great  question  of  the  early  twentieth  century. 

Roger  leaned  back  in  his  chair  and  ceased  to  listen. 

[312] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Later  he  chanced  to  be  standing  not  far  from  his 
wife  when  Mrs.  Linford  made  her  adieux.  The 
somewhat  terrific  old  lady  wrung  her  hostess's  hands 
with  an  extraordinary  fervor,  saying: 

"My  dear  child!  I  haven't  had  such  a  good  time 
for  years.  I  thought  conversation  was  dead.  I'm 
glad  to  find  that  it  isn't.  Look  here !  I  heard  some 
things  about  Woman  Suffrage  to-night  that  inter 
ested  me.  They  say  you  know  all  about  it.  Will 
you  let  me  come  one  day  and  ask  you  questions?" 

Hope  said  she  would  be  delighted,  and  old  Mrs. 
Linford  nodded. 

"Good!  I'll  just  have  a  glance  at  my  calendar, 
and  then  I'll  telephone  you.  . . .  You  look  very  lovely, 
my  dear.  It's  nice  to  be  pretty  and  clever  all  at 
once.  Good  night!" 

The  others  went  soon  after  this,  and  Hope  turned 
to  her  husband,  smiling. 

"I've  had  such  a  good  time  to-night,  Roger! 
Have  you?  I  thought  once  you  looked  a  little 
bored." 

"I've  been  better  amused,"  he  said. 

His  conscience  smote  him  even  as  he  spoke  the 
words,  and  again  when  he  saw  how  her  face  fell; 
but  he  had  kept  up  a  smiling  mask  before  their 
guests  until  he  was  fairly  trembling  with  irritation. 
He  was  beyond  himself. 

She  said:  "Oh,  oh,  I'm  so  sorry!  I  thought  they 
all  talked  so  well.  I  was  delighted." 

But  Roger  looked  at  her  morosely. 

[313] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

"If  one's  idea  of  a  dinner  party  is  a  kind  of  de 
bating  club,  I  suppose  the  evening  was  a  success." 

And  when  she  didn't  answer,  but  only  shook  her 
head,  he  went  on.  He  couldn't  have  known  in  his 
nervous  irritation  how  hard  and  cold  his  voice 
sounded. 

"I  thought  there  was  a  kind  of  understanding  be 
tween  us  about  this  subject  of  Woman  Suffrage — 
that  it  shouldn't  arise.  I  seem  to  have  been  mis 
taken." 

"Oh,  that's  what  annoyed  you?  Well,  I  can't 
altogether  control  what  my  guests  shall  talk  about, 
can  I?  I  didn't  introduce  the  subject." 

"I  overheard  you  making  an  engagement  to  talk 
about  it,"  he  said. 

And  Hope  answered,  quietly:   "Yes,  that's  true." 

She  seemed  for  the  first  time  to  lose  her  patience 
a  little. 

"Roger,  don't,  please,  be  any  more  Victorian  than 
you  can  help!  Do  you  actually  wish  me  to  under 
stand  that  I  am  not  allowed  to  speak  that  blas 
phemous  word  or  discuss  it  quietly  with  a  friend? 
It's  the  most  preposterous  thing  I  ever  heard  of. 
It's  mediaeval — feudal.  You  must  be  insane." 

It  was  preposterous,  of  course.  He  realized  that 
and  turned  red  over  the  realization.  He  had  laid 
himself  open  to  just  ridicule.  And  that  didn't  tend 
to  soothe  him. 

"You  know  well  enough  what  I  mean.  It's  the 
spirit  of  the  thing.  Knowing  quite  well  how  I  feel 

[314] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

about  this — this  movement,  you  deliberately  flaunt 
it  before  my  lace." 

"Oh  no,  I  don't,  Roger!  That  isn't  true!  I'm 
incapable  of  flaunting  anything,  and  you  know  it. 
Only — this  thing — it's  everywhere  about  us.  It's  in 
the  air.  It's  the  great  question,  the  great  move 
ment  of  our  time.  One  can't  be  forever  dodging 
out  of  its  way.  You  might  as  well  try  to  forbid  my 
mentioning  the  sunshine  or  the  trees.  ...  I  wish  I 
knew — "  She  frowned  at  him  in  real  anxiety.  "I 
wish  I  knew  just  why  you're  so  bitter  about  Equal 
Suffrage?  I  know  you  don't  approve  of  it,  but  then 
you  probably  don't  approve  of  heaps  of  other  things. 
Why  this  monomania  about  the  Franchise?" 

"It  ought  to  be  enough,"  said  he,  "that  the 
monomania,  as  you  call  it,  exists.  But  it  isn't, 
seemingly.-  I  suppose  it's  not  progressive  for  a  man 
to  be  master  in  his  own  house." 

"Master!"'  She  threw  the  word  back  at  him 
with  a  kind  of  amused  astonishment.  "Ah,  now 
we  are  comfortably  back  in  the  good  feudal  days. 
Do  you  mean  that?  Do  you  seriously  think  of  your 
self  as  my  master?  Why?" 

He  ignored  the  "why." 

"I  hope  I  may  seriously  consider  myself  master 
of  my  house.  That's  a  different  thing." 

"Oh?"  she  asked,  doubtfully.  "Is  it?  Aren't 
I  part  of  your  house?"  She  stretched  out  her  hands 
toward  him.  "Roger,  open  your  eyes!  You're 
dreaming  of  another  century.  There's  no  question 

21  [315] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

of  master  and  servant  in  marriage  nowadays.  Mar 
riage  is  a  partnership  between  two  equal,  self- 
respecting  people  who  have  no  more  right  to  issue 
commands  to  each  other  than  if  they  were  partners 
in  a  law  or  a  business  office.'* 

"That  means  you  defy  me  straight!"  he  said. 

It  was  a  ridiculous  thing  to  say.  He  was  in  the 
wrong,  and  knew  it  perfectly  well.  His  nerves  were 
all  in  a  jangle,  and  the  spirit  of  utter  perversity, 
which  moves  angry  little  children  to  wilder  and  wilder 
acts  of  sin,  had  him  hi  its  malignant  grip.  It  seemed 
he  simply  couldn't  behave  himself. 

f*Defy'?  Oh!  Why,  yes,  in  the  sense  you  mean 
it,  I  suppose  I  do.  I'm  a  grown  woman,  mistress 
of  myself,  married  to  you  by  my  own  free  will — 
your  wife,  not  your  servant.  I  oughtn't  to  have  to 
claim  the  right  to  think  my  own  thoughts,  choose 
my  own  friends  if  they  are  respectable,  speak  what 
decent  words  I  may  wish  to.'^ 

There  was  a  new  note  in  her  voice.  Even  through 
his  anger  and  bitterness  he  recognized  it — a  crisp- 
ness,  a  certainty.  When  this  explosive  question  had 
come  up  between  them  before,  she  had  been  all  sorrow 
and  deprecation  and  yielding.  Now  she  stood  erect 
and  faced  him  down.  She  was  indeed  mistress  of 
herself. 

He  bowed  his  head.  The  foundations  of  the  old 
order  were  crumbling  about  him,  and  he  felt  himself 
lost  among  the  debris.  He  had  been  a  fool  once 
too  often,  and  his  wife  despised  him.  The  truth 

[316] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

was,  he  had  stood  still  these  many  months  gone, 
and  she  had  passed  him  by,  she  and  her  clever 
friends  who  read  books  that  he  couldn't  read,  and 
kept  themselves  abreast  of  movements  whose  names 
he  scarcely  knew.  She  despised  him. 

He  turned  stiffly  and  walked  out  of  the  room. 
Behind  him  Hope  called  out,  once  in  impatience, 
once  again  rather  anxiously.  But  he  went  on  up 
the  stairs  and  into  his  room  and  shut  the  door  be 
hind  him. 

Even  at  this  last,  when  he  was  no  longer  angry, 
but  depressed  and  crushed,  he  was  aware  that  in  his 
perversity  he  had  done  the  worst  possible  thing, 
that  she  would  think  him  merely  boorish  and  ill- 
mannered.  But  he  could  do  no  otherwise.  He  was 
not  himself. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

Ewas  instinctive  with  Roger  to  turn  to  his  sister 
i  times  of  perplexity  or  woe.  He  lunched  alone 
with  her  on  the  day  after  this  unfortunate  evening, 
and  told  her  what  had  occurred.  He  told  it,  natural 
ly  enough,  from  his  own  slant  of  vision,  but  as  fairly 
as  he  was  able;  and  Nora  Cartwright,  who  knew  him 
well,  was  able  to  make  the  proper  allowances.  She 
nodded  over  his  description  of  the  dinner  party. 

"I  know;  we  dined  there  a  week  ago,  you  may 
remember,  with  much  the  same  sort  of  crowd. 
Henry  was  delighted,  and  hoped  we'd  get  asked 
again  soon;  but  I  was  just  a  wee  bit  depressed — 
not  bored,  but  depressed — and  all  about  myself. 
Those  clever  modern,  progressive  people  made  me 
realize  how  I  had  let  myself  drop  behind,  and  I  was 
ashamed.  I  ought  to  be  ashamed,  and  so  ought 
you.  Those  are  the  people  who  are  thinking  for 
the  community,  Roger.  Those  people  are  the  van 
guard  of  the  better  sort  of  society.  The  old  order 
is  passing.  They're  the  new  order,  and  they're  a 
better  one — much,  much  better." 

"I  suppose  so,"  Roger  said,  slowly.  "Yes,  I 
suppose  you're  right.  Once,  before  I  fell  hi  love, 

[318]    • 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

I  felt  some  of  the — the  stirrings  that  they  feel  now. 
I  got  into  the  procession  for  a  year  or  two,  though 
in  a  small  way.  I  dropped  it.  Well — " 

A  little  flare  of  resentment,  of  protest,  a  kind  of 
twinge  of  something  like  homesickness,  came  to 
him. 

"I  hate  to  see  her  turned  into  a  blue  stocking." 

But  Nora  scoffed  at  that. 

"Blue  stocking,  indeed!  You're  crazy — and  old- 
fashioned,  still.  Hope  loves  fun  more  than  any 
debutante  of  my  acquaintance.  Which  of  you  wants 
to  go  home  the  earlier  from  a  dance?" 

"I  do,"  he  confessed,  and  was  able  to  muster  a 
feeble  grin.  "Hope  would  come  home  by  daylight 
if  I  didn't  drag  her  away." 

"Of  course!  Well,  there  you  are.  You  see,  you 
don't  know  these  moderns.  They're  not  blue 
stockings  or  frivolers.  They're  blue  stockings  and 
frivolers  together,  and  several  other  things  as  well. 
They've  made  the  great  discovery  that  all  people, 
even  the  rather  commonplace  people,  have  brains, 
and  that  it's  fun  to  use  their  brains.  In  my  young 
days  only  clever  brains  were  used,  and  even  then 
they  weren't  often  applied  to  practical  things.  They 
were  expended  rather  academically." 

She  stopped  all  at  once,  as  if  she  had  just  thought 
of  something. 

"What's  the  real  truth  about  this  Woman  Suf 
frage  business?  It  seems  to  turn  you  into  a  lunatic 
whenever  it  comes  up.  Why  so  much  bitterness?" 

[319] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

His  eyes  suddenly  looked  haunted  and  miserable. 

"I'm  afraid  of  it,  Nora.  There's  the  plain  truth. 
I'm  deathly  afraid  of  it.  I'm  jealous.  It  stood 
between  Hope  and  me  for  months  before  we  were 
married.  It  is  coming  between  us  again  now.  I 
can  see  it  coming,  step  by  step,  and  I  can't  stop  it. 
It  was  bigger  to  her  once  than  I  was,  and  it  '11  be 
bigger  again;  especially  as  she — she  thinks  I'm  a 
bit  of  a  fool.  It's  the  one  thing  in  the  world  that 
threatens  our  happiness  together.  I  thought — when 
she  came  a  cropper  with  it  two^years  ago — that  that 
would  be  the  end.  But  I  might  have  known  better. 
It  had  got  in  her  blood.  I  haven't  a  dog's  chance 
against  it.  Even  though  she  failed  once,  she  won't 
stay  beaten.  Old  Henry  said  that  to  me,  himself. 
He  said,  *Pooh!  she'll  find  a  way.'  And  she  will, 
you  may  be  sure!  She'll  be  back  on  the  platform 
again  within  a  year,  and  I  shall  be — minding  the 
baby,  I  suppose,  like  the  husbands  in  the  comic 
papers." 

His  sister  looked  at  him  thoughtfully. 

"Have  you  said  just  that  to  Hope?"  she  inquired. 
"Have  you  told  her  exactly  why  you  oppose  her 
taking  interest  in  Woman  Suffrage?" 

"Well—"  He  tried  to  remember.  "I  thought 
I  had.  I  don't  know.  I've  talked  like  an  ass  and 
a  bully,  I'm  well  aware  of  that!  But  whether  I've 
given  her  any  clear  idea  of  what  my  mind  was  about 
it — I  should  think  very  likely  I  haven't." 

"Then  just  you  go  straight  home,"  said  Nora 

[320] 


THE    OPENING    DOOR 

Cartwright,  energetically,  "and  tell  her  now.  Have 
it  out!  Don't  get  angry!  Tell  her  how  you  feel, 
and  try  to  find  out  what  her  plans  are — if  she  has 
any.  I've  a  notion  you're  in  for  a  surprise." 

He  was  a  little  aghast  at  that,  and  made  objec 
tions;  but  she  toppled  them  over  one  by  one,  and 
he  was  accustomed  to  listening  to  her  with  respect. 
He  found  himself  bundled  out  of  the  house  before 
he  quite  realized  it. 

Well,  it  could  do  no  further  harm.  And  he  owed 
Hope  some  apology,  some  kind  of  reparation  for  his 
behavior  on  the  evening  before.  He  had  acted  like 
a  heavy  father  in  a  melodrama.  He  braced  his 
shoulders  and  turned  homeward. 

She  heard  him  through  a  kind  of  staring  bewilder 
ment,  and  cried  out:  "Oh,  Roger,  you  poor  dar 
ling!"  And  he  quite  suddenly  found  her  in  his 
arms,  wrecking  his  collar  with  tears.  "Afraid? 
Good  heavens!  Why  didn't  you  explain  long  ago? 
I  thought —  Oh,  we  have  got  things  into  such  a 
muddle!" 

She  pulled  him  down  into  a  big  chair  that  was 
really  meant  for  one  person  at  a  time,  but  seemed 
able  to  manage  two. 

"Roger,  I've  got  to  make  you  understand  that 
any  idea  of  my  interest  in  Woman  Suffrage  inter 
fering  with  my  love  for  you,  or  coming  between  us 
in  any  way,  is  perfectly  maniacal.  The  only  possible 
way  it  could  do  that  would  be,  as  it  already  seems 
to  have  been  done,  by  your  misunderstanding  how 

[321] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

I  felt  about  it.  In  the  first  place,  there's  no  ques 
tion  of  my  trying  to  go  back  to  active  public 
work — canvassing,  speaking,  serving  on  committees. 
That's  done  with.  I'm  not  fitted  for  it  at  all. 
What's  left,  then?  Well,  I've  only  recently  begun 
to  see  what  there  is  left — what  can  be  done  by  the 
woman  who  stays  at  home.  I  was  unhappy  about 
it  for  a  time,  as  you  know.  I  felt  a  sense  of  respon 
sibility,  as  most  thinking  women  do  nowadays, 
but  there  seemed  to  be  nothing  for  me  to  do.  I'd 
been  weighed  and  found  wanting. 

"Roger,  do  you  remember  the  interest  you  used 
to  have  hi  what  they  call  the  Progressive  move 
ment  in  politics?  You  talked  to  me  a  good  deal 
about  it  at  one  time.  What  did  you  do?  You  didn't 
make  speeches.  You  didn't  travel  about  the  country 
stirring  people  up.  You  couldn't.  It  wasn't  in 
your  temperament  or  your  power.  You  stayed 
quietly  at  home  and  had  little  lunch  parties  where 
the  new  politics  were  discussed.  You  encouraged 
this  man;  you  put  heart  into  that  one.  You  brought 
together  people  who  ought  to  know  each  other  for 
the  good  of  the  cause;  you  arbitrated  little  dis 
putes;  you  spent  some  of  your  income  in  backing 
men  who  couldn't  otherwise  have  given  their  time 
and  their  talents  to  the  movement  you  believed  in. 

"Well,  that,  or  something  like  it,  is  what  I  should 
like  to  do  with  such  time  and  attention  as  I  can 
spare  from  my  family.  I  should  like  to  have  a  lot 
of  parties  such  as  I  had  last  night,  where  clever, 

[322] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

ambitious,  useful  people  can  meet  each  other  and 
talk  about  good  things — Woman  Suffrage  among 
them.  I  should  like  my  house  to  be  known  as  that 
sort  of  house.  I  should  like  to  spend  some  of  my 
income  in  backing  the  cause  I  believe  in.  I  should 
like  to  keep  myself  abreast  of  the  times,  so  that  I 
can  bring  my  daughter  up  fit  to  live  in  her  times — 
the  times  that  are  in  the  making  now. 

"You  see,  Roger,  you  and  I  are  just  nice,  quiet, 
average  people  without  special  talents  or  accom 
plishments.  We're  the  Man  and  Woman  in  the 
Street — a  good  street,  if  you  like.  But  this  is  the 
day  of  the  Man  and  Woman  in  the  Street.  This 
is  our  day.  And  if  we  keep  our  eyes  open  and  our 
minds  alive  we  can  do  a  lot  for  the  world  without 
making  grand  speeches  or  getting  into  the  news 
papers." 

Roger  took  up  one  of  her  hands  and  kissed  it  with 
a  kind  of  solemnity. 

"You're  a  better  man  than  I  am,  Mrs.  Bacon.  I 
take  off  my  hat  to  you.  Lead  on,  and  I'll  follow 
you  as  best  I  can." 

But  she  didn't  want  that. 

"I  shall  do  nothing  of  the  kind!  The  idea! 
There's  to  be  no  leading  and  following  hi  this  house. 
You  and  I  are  a  partnership,  not  a  procession. 
Where  we  go  we'll  go  hand  in  hand,  my  dear.  .  .  . 
And  listen  a  moment!  If  what  I've  been  saying 
sounded  rather  solemn  and  stiff  and  dull  as  a  scheme 
of  existence,  I  didn't  want  it  to.  That's  not  all  of 

[323] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

life,  you  know.  If  it  were,  we  should  both  cut  our 
throats  before  a  year  was  out.  There's  room  for 
plenty  of  fun.  I  want  to  go  to  heaps  of  other  kinds 
of  parties.  I  want  to  dance  and  go  to  the  opera. 
I  want  to  go  abroad  in  the  summer.  I  want  to  be 
gay  while  I  can.  You  must  understand  that.  We're 
not  to  turn  into  a  pair  of  prigs." 

She  looked  so  very,  very  beautiful  when  she  said 
that,  and  so  little  like  a  prig,  that  he  pulled  her  half 
violently  into  his  arms  and  kissed  her.  She  lay 
there  still,  with  a  little  smile  and  closed  eyes.  But 
he  had  to  let  her  go  before  long,  for  he  heard  the 
voice  of  his  daughter  raised  in  high  complaint  out 
side  the  door,  and  presently  the  nurse  came  in  with 
the  child  in  her  arms,  for  it  was  feeding-time. 

He  said:    "Do  you  want  me  to  go?" 

And  his  wife  said:  "No;  stay!  Why  shouldn't 
we  talk  while  I  nurse  the  baby?" 

They  didn't  talk  much,  though;  for,  with  that  little 
clinging  body  against  her  breast,  Hope  was  quite 
incapable  of  conversation.  She  sat  in  a  kind  of 
smiling,  beatific  dream,  bending  over  her  child. 
Roger,  near  by,  watched  the  two,  and  his  heart 
swelled  within  him.  He  had  said  very  little  in 
answer  to  or  in  comment  upon  Hope's  speech;  but 
it  had  worked  an  enormous  change  in  him.  His 
fears  had  evaporated,  his  spirits  had  gone  up  to 
blood-heat.  He  felt  as  if  he  stood  in  a  glow  of 
sunshine.  He  looked  at  his  wife  as  she  sat  with 
then*  child  hi  her  arms,  oblivious  of  the  world,  and 

1324] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

he  all  but  laughed  aloud  with  relief  and  joy  and 
pride. 

There  were  adjustments  still  to  be  made  between 
them,  perfect  understandings  still  to  be  reached; 
but  the  clouds  that  had  darkened  his  life  were  gone 
from  above  him,  the  incubus  of  fear  and  jealousy 
gone  from  his  shoulders. 

"Oh,  baby  darling!  Manners!  Manners!  You 
mustn't  be  greedy,"  Hope  cried,  for  little  Miss 
Bacon  was  making  noises  like  a  hungry  puppy.  She 
looked  up  at  her  husband,  and  they  laughed  to 
gether — a  laugh  of  gladness  and  intimacy  and  free 
dom  from  care.  They  hadn't  laughed  together  like 
that  in  some  months. 


CHAPTER    XXVII 

MISS  ALICE  KING  dropped  in  at  Sixty-ninth 
Street  some  weeks  after  this,  and  found  her 
goddaughter  with  a  newspaper  in  her  lap  looking 
a  little  solemn. 

Miss  King  said:  "How's  the  heiress  of  all  the 
ages?" 

And  that  made  Hope  laugh. 

"If  you  mean  Miss  Bacon,  Miss  Bacon's  very  well 
indeed,  thank  you.  She  has  a  tooth — and  didn't 
make  much  row  over  it,  either.  We'll  go  upstairs 
and  call  on  her  presently." 

She  turned  sober  again  and  raised  the  evening 
newspaper  in  her  hand. 

"I've  just  read  something  very  terrible  and  shock 
ing.  It  has  upset  me.  About  that  Mr. — Traill, 
you  know." 

"It  might  well  be,"  Miss  King  said,  with  a  frown, 
"that  some  young  woman's  father  or  brother  has 
taken  the  law  into  his  own  hands  and  killed  the 
fellow." 

"That's  just  what  has  happened.  At  least — he's 
going  to  die.  It's  too  dreadful." 

Miss  King  thought  she  had  heard  of  more  deplor 
able  happenings,  but  Hope  shook  her  head. 

[326] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

"I  knew  him  better  than  you  did.  He  was  hon 
est  in  his  way.  He  believed  in  himself  and  in 
his  monstrous  scheme  of  life.  Well — he  taught 
me  something.  Oh  yes!  You  needn't  protest.  He 
really  did.  Of  course,  he  taught  it  all  wrong,  and 
I  was  an  ignorant  fool  and  learned  it  all  wrong.  But 
I  can  look  back  now  and  see  that  it  had  its  place. 
Perhaps  I  should  never  have  got  waked  up  at  all 
if  I  hadn't  been  waked  suddenly  like  that,  and  with 
violence.  Who  knows?  .  .  .  And  now  he's  gone — or 
going.  I  can't  help  being  a  little  sad.  We  saw 
visions  together  once." 

She  shook  off  her  depression  with  an  effort. . 

"When  will  you  dine  with  us?  I've  been  trying 
for  you  so  long." 

Miss  King  said  any  day  during  the  next  week, 
and  they  settled  on  Wednesday. 

"These  dinner  parties  of  yours  are  growing  rather 
famous.  I  shall  be  glad  to  see  one.  I  hear  about 
them  on  all  sides." 

Hope  laughed. 

"Oh,  they're  very  simple,  and  there's  nothing  new 
or  startling  about  them.  They're  just  our  way — 
Roger's  and  mine — of  being  a  little  useful,  and  amus 
ing  ourselves  at  the  same  time.  You  see,  we're 
no  good  in  the  open.  We  can't  make  speeches  or 
write  books.  We  can't  do  the  things  you  real 
workers  do.  We're  just  commonplace,  nice,  un- 
talented  people,  and  so  we  have  to  fall  back  on  what 
any  commonplace  people  could  do.  It's  great  fun." 

[327] 


THE   OPENING    DOOR 

"It's  a  great  work,"  said  Miss  King,  emphatically. 
"And  don't  you  ever  call  yourself  a  commonplace 
woman  to  me,  because  I  won't  stand  it.  I  feel  very 
humble  about  you,  my  dear  child.  I  was  wrong. 
I  was  a  fool.  I  tried  to  make  you  a  certain  conven 
tional  kind  of  Suffrage  worker,  and  in  the  face  of 
all  sorts  of  warnings  I  hadn't  the  intelligence  to 
see  that  you  weren't  suited  to  it.  When  you  gave 
it  up  and  married  I  was  heartbroken,  because  I 
thought  we  had  lost  you  forever.  I  was  a  fool.  I 
might  have  known  you'd  find  a  way.  Well,  you 
have  found  it;  it's  a  splendid  way.  You're  doing  an 
incalculable  amount  of  good,  and  I'm  proud  of  you." 

Hope  kissed  the  grim  and  tender  old  warrior  and 
patted  her  cheek. 

"I  only  ask  people  here  and  prod  them  on  to  fight 
with  one  another.  It's  Roger  who's  doing  the  real 
work.  He  has  got  back  into  Progressive  politics 
again — behind  the  scenes,  like  me — and  he  and  his 
friends  are  truly  accomplishing  something.  Tm 
proud  of  him,  if  you  like!" 

"Has  he  come  over  to  The  Cause?"  Miss  King 
wanted  to  know. 

"Well — he's  at  least  on  his  way.  He's  very  re 
spectful  about  it,  and  flies  furiously  at  anybody  who 
jeers.  But,  you  see,  he  had  a  good  deal  to  contend 
with  in  the  way  of  personal  feeling  and  prejudice. 
I'm  not  trying  to  hurry  him — bless  his  heart!"  She 
stopped  to  listen.  "I  rather  think  that's  Roger 
coming  in  now.  Yes,  it  is!" 

[328] 


THE   OPENING   DOOR 

She  called  as  his  footsteps  approached  up  the 
stairs,  and  he  answered  and  came  into  the  room. 
Miss  King  watched  the  greeting  between  husband 
and  wife,  and  nodded  her  gray  head,  and  her  eyes 
shone  contentedly  behind  the  big,  round  spectacles. 
There  was  true  happiness  in  this  house. 

Roger  seemed  delighted  to  find  her  there,  and 
chaffed  her  about  one  of  her  lieutenants  who  had 
recently  been  arrested  by  mistake.  Then  he  de 
manded  his  offspring. 

"Where's  my  daughter?  I  want  to  see  my 
daughter.  Come  and  help  me  see  my  daughter!" 

They  went,  all  three,  to  the  nursery,  where  Miss 
Bacon  was  just  waking  up;  and  again  Miss  King 
beamed  with  satisfaction  as  the  two  young  people 
bent  together  over  their  child's  bed.  Roger  prodded 
the  baby  with  his  finger  and  made  it  laugh  and  kick 
its  heels. 

"Speak  up,  young  'un!  Speak  up  for  your  Aunt 
Alice  King.  Say  *  Votes  for  Women.'  It's  the  only 
thing  she  knows,"  he  explained,  gravely. 

The  child  made  a  bubbly  noise  that  sounded  like 
"Goo,"  somewhat  prolonged. 

"You  see!"  said  her  father.   "What  did  I  tell  you?" 

Hope  laughed  and  took  her  daughter  up  in  her 
arms,  for  it  was  nursing-time. 


THE  END 


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